The State Lands Act is being reviewed to strengthen the enforcement powers of the Director of Lands.

Ministry of Lands Permanent Secretary Raijeli Taga highlighted this while making submissions to the Public Accounts Committee on the review of the 2022 Audit Report on Economic Sector.

The Public Accounts Committee members raised concerns on the arrears owed to the government as in one of the cases, a lessee owes them almost $2 million.

Taga stresses that lessees are supposed to be paying their rental as outlined in their lease conditions and that’s its government’s loss if they take it as bad debt and just waive it off.

She says they need to collect the arrears

“The experience we are having is that when we issue notices, a lessee can just come and pay $10 and that begins the new cycle of notices. They can just pay $10 or $20 and then they wait until they receive another notice. So we are trying to not, the re-entry of leases is our last resort. We are trying avenues that we can recover that money. So that is why we are trying to, we are reviewing the State Lands Act to strengthen the powers of the Director of Lands to collect those arears.”

According to the Ministry of Lands, the current legislation that governs the leasing of state lands was enacted almost 90 years ago and this is currently being reviewed.