Families in Pemba demand compensation for lost land

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Families in Pemba demand compensation for lost land

12:23 CAT | 21 Aug 2018

Photo: O País

Many of the 900 families who lost land in the northern Mozambican city of Pemba for the construction of the Pemba Logistical Base, intended to support the operations of oil and gas companies, on Thursday rioted in the streets of the city, throwing up barricades and clashing with the police.

The demonstrators told the independent television station STV that they regarded the compensation they had received for the land as derisory and they wanted more money. They said they resorted to barricading the access road to the logistical base, only after attempts to obtain what they regarded as fair compensation had failed.

The land in question had been farmed. Some of the protestors said they inherited the land from their ancestors, and it was their only source of income.

One woman, Sabira Bilal, told STV “They wanted to give me 728 meticais (about 12 US dollars) for a field. Is that normal? Is 728 meticais normal? I refused to accept the money, but even so, they took our field”.

Another of those affected, Assicate Zacarias, said “this has been going on for a long time, but they all remain silent faced with such an injustice. The company Ports of Cabo Delgado (which owns the base), the municipality, the Pemba district administration, the attorney’s office, the provincial court, and even the Ministry of Land, Environment and Rural Development are aware of the matter, but so far we don’t have any response”.

Zacarias said that, with his field “I could feed my family for seven months, but I only received 2,000 meticais. What am I going to do with 2,000 meticais?”.

One elderly woman, Zaina Gulamo, said “they promised to build houses for us, and to give us a space for farming, but so far neither one thing nor the other has happened. We just see trucks driving past, and the building works. That’s why we’re sitting in the road, to demand our rights, our money, our fields”.

As the television footage showed, the police used considerable violence to disperse the demonstrators. They used tear gas and detained people they believed were the ringleaders. Even so, the access road was closed between 06.00 and 11.00 on Thursday.

The spokesperson for the Cabo Delgado provincial police command, Augusto Guta, justified the use of force. “Their modus operandi and the blunt instruments they were carrying showed that the demonstration was not peaceful”, he told reporters. “That was why the police had to use force in order to restore public order”.

Pemba Municipal Council claims that the compensation given to the families that lost land is fair. The Mayor of Pemba, Tagir Carimo, called on the demonstrators to show some legal basis for their claims.

The municipality, he said, had received over 40 million meticais from Ports of Cabo Delgado (PCD) to compensate the family, and to date had paid compensation to 763 families. The table used fixed compensation at 7.5 meticais per square metre of land. Since a hectare is 10,000 square metres, compensation for a field covering half a hectare should have been 37,500 meticais.

Carimo said there was still 1.5 million hectares in the compensation fund, intended for the final 51 families who have so far refused to receive the money, because they disagree with the compensation table. A further 55 families have been removed from the list of claimants, because they cannot prove they ever occupied land in the logistical base area.

“We think the compensation is fair, because the rate envisaged in the law was used”, said the Mayor. “But if the families have a legal basis for their claims, they can present it to the Municipal Council, which will then work with PCD to restore the rights of the communities”.

As for providing the families with hew houses or other plots of land, “we don’t recall that the municipality, much less the company, made any promises in this regard”, added Carimo.

Source: AIM