We've been telling you all about the land amnesty program currently being done in the Lake Independence area. The way it's supposed to work is that those residents who have been trying to get land titles for properties they've been living on for years will all get the assistance of their area representative and the Lands Department to fast-track the process.
Today, about 100 more residents in Lake I got the benefit of the program and Area Rep. Mark King invited the media out to see it process in action. Here's what he told us:
Hon. Mark King, Area Representative - Lake Independence
"Today as promise we have the land amnesty program running in Lake I. The program aims at giving leases, helping people with issues they'd been having to get their titles and turning those into purchase, also reducing purchase prices for people. In here a land roughly cost $3,000 - $5,000, we give them for $500 - $800 - so you help them reduce the price and get their land title. It also caters for new land owners. Whenever the government gets new land as in the Cotton Tree case; lets say they get 30 lands, we out them alongside other land that we get and we give it to new land owners. Lets say you just turn 18 or you lives in your mother's back yard and stuff. We have data on people that have it for a while living in their parents back yard and we give them a new land - stuff like that."
Reporter
"How many people are benefitting from this program Minister?"
Hon. Mark King
"This is the second hundred that we are doing. I quite clearly remember that last year we did the first one and this one today is the second one and I think in November of this year we have the other one for 200 pieces of land. Those include new land owners and present land owners."
Geovannie Brackett, reporter
"With that first hundred, how many people then and today would actually get a title?"
Hon. Mark King
"Everybody gets what we called a purchase title. We reduce your price for you, we take it all the way down, we take you out of all the hassle of going back and forth to lands department - all you need to do is pay for your land title at the reduce cost that we got it for and even if you pay one dollar under the land amnesty program towards your purchase title that we are giving today - that land is yours forever, nobody can take it."
King says that another amount of residents will benefit in the next few weeks.
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