Last night on 7News you heard Minster of Natural Resources Godwin Hulse talk about some of the difficulties he’s been having at the Ministry of Natural Resources. He told us he’s had to turn into a kind of private investigator, to make sure that persons in whose names land is applied for are the actual persons who are receiving the land. It’s diligence borne out of an old practice in the Lands Department where real names and identity details of persons are used in Land applications without their knowledge. Yesterday – after we gather he made a self-defence presentation in Cabinet – we probed him about the prevalence of this practice during the tenure of his predecessor Gaspar Vega:….
Jules Vasquez
"Referring again to this specific type of fraud where people are used without their knowledge or consent and also bogus companies are used. Would you give us a ball park figure on how much of that sort of thing you've encountered?"
Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Natural Resources
"I can't yet because we're still doing that; we've found quite a few."
Jules Vasquez
"Sir you refer to a lacks culture that persisted perhaps a deliberately lacks allowing fraudulence culture that persisted for many many years. Did it prevail before your arrival during the tenure of Mr. Vega? Where people were allowed to register, convey, acquire land without the individual appearing in front of you to say I am Jules Vasquez this da my land."
Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Natural Resources
"Well that was a system that existed yes, a lot of people just applied and then it came all up and it went through the system and it goes to the minister and the minister of course will sign the transfer or he'll sign whatever comes to him from his officers and then that continues. The difference and so I'm not saying that is anything onto word I'm simply saying how the system works."
Jules Vasquez
"So fraud was perpetrated thusly?"
Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Natural Resources
"Yes but you want to be clear what you're saying, fraud would be perpetrated but remember there is a whole system that brings that file to the minister. I'm not saying it can't still happen to me you know except the difference is I am extremely vigilant to that sort of thing and because I am so cognisant of it that I want to make sure as best as I can that in fact you are the person who got it; that is where I go the extra mile. I'm not sure other ministers would go around to find out if the person lives there and all that, that is the kind of things I do."
Jules Vasquez
"Would you also accept that the people who put these let's call them sleeper applicants in the system are politically connected person or persons who happen to know Mr. so and so live da X Y constituency; he don't know or he dead or something like that and we could put his name in the system, I got his social security details, could put it in the system and we get this land and we flip it, we done know how the system work. Were those politically connected person connected to politicians in the Barrow administration?"
Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Natural Resources
"Well I won't answer in that direct way, I'll simply say there were 100s of agents floating around lands when I got there, lots of them politically connected. All sorts of people tearing through the place; in fact to use a term that people use to use it's like a bazar. Go over there you don't see nobody, you don't see nobody floating through, you don't see no crowd, you don't see no agents running through; in fact I see people every Wednesday and Thursday and I see them by appointment which are made. The place is calm, the place is very calm so those things have sort of seized down for sure but yes a lot of agents run around and I'm sure they were politically connected."
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