Strict measures must be implemented to stop the growth of informal settlements, says investment consultant Sandeep Singh .
This was during the draft National Housing Policy 2024-2030 consultation at the Suva Civic Centre on Wednesday.
“We don’t want to create a disaster because people will still migrate, that is happening not only in Fiji but in other countries, the urban migration and unless we have strict measures, we won’t stop that,” he said.
“Why don’t we run a program under the policy where people can be given assistance to move back where they come from because we want to reduce the number of informal settlements.
“As you know Fiji’s urban area is basically informal settlements, the numbers are 24 per cent, the basic number of informal settlements are about 250. In your policy, do you know that it is important that we formalise informal settlements or we should try to avoid formalising the informal settlements because when we start formalising the informal settlements, it is creating more and more numbers of informal settlement in our country.
He also raised the issue of idle undeveloped land located along the Nadi to Lautoka corridor.
“This land is basically leased by people who don’t utilise the land, so they lease it and keep it until the value of the land increases and then they try to sell it and government goes in the bush looking for land for development.
“I wanted to ask in your policy does anything reflect the contribution of the stakeholders’ input, you had a stakeholders meeting where Ministry of Land, TLTB were part of it, was there any discussion on making land easily available for housing development rather than going around the bush and looking for land to develop?”
New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Housing adviser Keith Hornby said there was a huge spectrum of informal housing in Fiji.
“Some of it range from genuine squatters, when people squat on land —freehold or State land — or any other land without the permission of the landowners,” he said.
“Then you have a huge spectrum of informality from the other end where you basically have a developer that sought to undertake a proper development and for whatever reason that process has collapsed, and they’ve walked away.
“So you have middle class people who thought they were buying into a project, have taken up occupancy on that land and it’s all fallen through, so through no fault of their own they’re left in a situation where they live on a lot that’s not formalised properly, there’re no titles being given, the infrastructure hasn’t been given so when we say informal settlement, I think it’s good to realise there’s a hug spectrum under that.”
He said resolving this issue required a multi-pronged approach.
“There are many people who cannot afford and will never be able to afford a house , so there’s an argument that can be made in improving the supply of social housing and that’s through PRB (Public Rental Board) and the other NGOs (non-governmental organisations).
“Many of those organisations have struggled for a number of years to simply maintain the stock that they have let alone grow other stock.”