PPP/C Member of Parliament and parliamentary whip Gail Teixeira has criticised the Head of the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) Sydney James for appearing before the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on lands, which she also says appears to have strayed from its gazetted terms of reference.
When James appeared before the CoI on Wednesday, he testified about a number of matters, including SOCU’s probe of the controversial ‘Pradoville 2’ housing scheme at Goedverwagting’ on the East Coast of Demerara. The CoI heard on Wednesday that the area in which the housing scheme is situated might have been ancestral lands owned by the descendants of freed African slaves.
In a statement on Thursday on the CoI’s proceedings so far, Teixeira noted that the Terms of Reference (ToR) gazetted on March 11 listed the objective of the CoI as “To examine and make recommendations to resolve all issues and uncertainties surrounding the claims of Amerindian Land titling, the individual, joint or communal ownership of lands acquired by freed Africans, and any other matters relative to land titling in Guyana.”
