The government will be seeking to repossess unused lands from Cooperative Societies, according to Minister of Labour Joseph Hamilton.
“Cooperative societies have in their possession tens of thousands of acres of lands, most of them un-productive,” he said during the 2023 budget debate yesterday.
He noted that in many instances cooperative societies are run by a family or one man who took control and warned that they will not be allowed to keep those lands.
“We will have to make those lands productive because as we continue to speak about food security and agricultural expansion, the nation cannot afford that tens of thousands of acres that are in the hands of co-op societies …continue to be unproductive,” he said.
Hamilton revealed that he has asked the Guyana Lands and Surveys Com-mission, the Guyana Forestry Commission and the Mahaica, Mahaicony, Abary-Agricultural Development Authority to make data available as to the amount of lands that co-op societies have in their possession.
“[Cooperative societies] that want to work with the government, we will work with them. But what we will not continue to allow happening [is] people utilizing the farcical umbrella of co-op societies when they have government lands in their possession. I have no apologies to make. The action, as I said, is either they resolve these matters or they will be dissolved,” he concluded.
