THE vanua o Betoraurau, Sabeto Environment Committee has called for a radical constitutional shift demanding that the ownership of mineral royalties be stripped from the State and returned to indigenous landowners.
Committee chairman Don Natabe made the submission during a recent public consultation, arguing that current provisions in the Constitution regarding resource ownership do not reflect the rights of the iTaukei.
”We need to change the Constitution and remove the provision which states the ownership of royalties belongs to the State,” he said.
Mr Natabe highlighted the technical and legal challenges faced by Land Owning Units (LOUs) when mining activities move beneath the surface, often crossing multiple boundaries.
”When you look at the landowning units on the surface, you can divide them but beneath that and where the tunnel goes to, in terms of the mining activity, it goes across several LOUs.”
Mr Natabe said the current system makes it nearly impossible to accurately distribute benefits.
”How do we calculate what percentage of royalty goes to the LOU when the ownership belongs to those LOUs? That is another conversation in itself because the miners themselves cannot segregate how much percentage the various tokatoka are getting.”
As part of the proposed reforms to the Mining Act, Mr Natabe also pushed for a significant administrative change to move oversight of Fiji’s natural wealth back under indigenous administration.
”When you are drafting the new mining act, you must take that into consideration, and with that comes our next proposal that the ministry responsible for land and mineral resources be reverted back to the Ministry of iTaukei Affairs.”
The chairman insisted that the management of resources should be consolidated under a single ministry independent of direct State responsibility.
