157 former agricultural workers and descendants in Trelawny now legal landowners

Approximately 157 former agricultural workers and their descendants who were living informally at the Gravell Hill Land Settlement in Wakefield, Trelawny, are now legal landowners following the handing over of Letters of Possession at an official handing over ceremony in the parish on Tuesday.

The letters, prepared by the Sugar Company of Jamaica Holdings (SCJ Holdings), represent the first step towards receiving a land title and will enable citizens to acquire several benefits and rights that come with formal land ownership.

Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining and keynote speaker at the handing over ceremony, Floyd Green, outlined that the distribution of the letters signifies the Government's efforts to rectify the longstanding issue of formally handing over sugar lands to their rightful owners.

“Our investigations at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining revealed that persons who were working at the Hampden Sugar Estate over 60 years ago were given permission by the management of the estate to occupy this piece of marginal land and therefore they have lived undisturbed and have had generations lived here, settled on these lands for the past 60, 70 years,” he said.

He noted that despite this fact, the residents were unable to provide proof that they were owners of the land, which in turn limited their access to benefits such as permanent structures and essential utilities, underscoring the importance of handing over Letters of Possession.

“They were unable to go to the bank to get a little loan, they were unable to truly invest in building the sort of structures they wanted because they could not tell if one day somebody would come and try and make claim to the areas they occupy,” Green shared.  

The agriculture minister indicated that this exercise is a part of a larger plan of the ministry to ensure that people that are in the same position, where, for example, they have lived on lands for 50 years or more and know their boundaries for their plot but do not have any proof of ownership, can also benefit from an initiative of this nature.

“I have said to the SCJ, let us accelerate the pace of getting people in the same circumstances their Letters of Possessions and then I have met with the National Land Agency (NLA) to say we want to move from Letters of Possessions to ensure that people can get titles for these lands,” Green said.

Green also shared that the ministry intends to develop a comprehensive programme to provide titles for individuals who occupy agricultural lands for residential purposes.

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