Bridging the gap between landowners and Government will not be an easy task, but it is not impossible.
Minister for Lands and Mineral Resources Filimoni Vosarogo highlighted this during an interview on The Fiji Times online platform The Lens @177.
“I think everything needs time, with some landowners, the wound has been deepened and that you need to dress up and cover and make sure that it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
“Which means that a lot more things have to happen between the three-way party. We’re beginning to build that, and we want to build that relationship so that there is much confidence in these projects.
“The confidence we need is only going to become manageable when we have landowners happy about things that are happening. Investors who are happy about what they’re going to get. And government who is happy to facilitate.”
Mr Vosarogo also spoke about the social responsibility implications for mining companies, which he said companies were aware of.
“It’s just part of your incursion responsibilities. But I think people these days are more concerned about environmental issues.
“In Namosi, one of the main things that that’s come out is over the years there’s been a lot of environmental damages, which we on file would think was reported or has been mitigated and has been resolved.
“But for landowners, they think that the past administration was just not urgent enough in addressing them when it happened and so, those are the kinds of things that we need to start doing with them.”
A key aspect, Mr Vosarogo said was to provide landowners and communities the assurance that Government would perform its monitoring role and regulatory functions and engage with the company to stick to “what’s on black and white” and what had been agreed to by all parties.
