Land sharks intensify illegal encroachment of plantation lands
Sri Lanka’s tea plantation sector is facing an alarming issue of illegal encroachments of estates managed by the Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs) by unknown gangs with the backing of politicians in respective areas, several planters and residents complained.
The extent of plantation land is shrinking since RPCs took over its management in 1995 due to either land encroachments, subleasing or selling land lots illegally.
According to official data, 94.521 hectares leased out to 20 RPCs in 1995, have fallen to a level of less than 72.000 ha after 28 years.
Most recent incidents of land sharks grabbing plots and swaths of tea estate lands had taken place in Nuwara Eliya District where there are 21 tea estates, a superintendent of a leading company said.
He noted that a gang with the backing of a politician in the area forcefully encroached on an unutilised 25 acre block of land in the estate managed by the company.
The estate management immediately sought the intervention of the local authorities and the police to resolve the issue in a peaceful manner. But the issue has not been solved due to political influence, he added.
Moreover plantation workers living in line rooms in estates use to remove 100 to 200 tea bushes daily to expand the swath of lands given to them, another tea planter revealed.
The law of the country forbids encroachment of both private and public property and furthermore these leased lands of the RPC as per the lease agreement cannot be transferred or sold without government approval.
Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had made a proposal to the cabinet and approved to take back the underutilised land in estates to the government.
In some estates, plots of land were cleared for the purpose of crop cultivations opening the way for the people to grab estate land, another company estate manager said adding that some lands given to local authorities are lying unused.
Using a loophole in the law such expropriated land by local authorities’ and the cleared land in estates for crop cultivations had been grabbed by groups of people with high political backing and nothing can be done by the management companies, he said.
In another malpractice, some of those lands had ben subleased by unauthorised persons in connivance with land sharks although these cannot be transferred or sold as per the lease agreements.
Another incident was reported sometimes back when a gang of around 200 individuals forcefully encroached on an extent of 8.5 hectares, at the Madampe estate, in the Rakwana area. Legal action was taken against the encroachers at that time, he told the Business Times.
Law enforcement authority’s failure to act against encroachers engaged in public asset robbery in broad daylight will encourage further forcible grabbing of productive, commercial, and protected state lands. There was a tendency in increasing such illegal acts prior to elections, he divulged.
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