Lands C.E.O. Says It Will Be A Group Effort…

Sharon Ramclam

As you heard, accountability will be one of the key premises of the new systems being put in place – making all officers accountable for their actions. A critical component of the cleanup will be cracking down on lands officers who have used their status, connections and knowledge to raid government coffers in every way.

Sharon Ramclam, C.E.O., Ministry of Natural Resources

“Right now, there is a sense of arbitrary decision making by lands officers at varying levels of the spectrum; that has to stop. At the end of the day, the gatekeepers are the Commissioner of Lands, the Deputy Commissioner of Lands and the Minister. And so if there are any documents that are processed outside of the prescribed procedures, we are expecting that what we are putting in place now will capture those things. Obviously, there are officers who know the lands process very well. Those officers, hopefully, will have to in some way be conformed to the policies and procedures. But also I want to say that there are two sides to this—there is the system that you talk about and the practices of misconduct and wrongdoing—it is also entertained by the same members of the public who knows about it and entertain theses officers in doing it. So at the same time while I said in the beginning that the land reform is inclusive and it has to be a collective effort, it is just that. If we really want to tackle this thing, we also have to ask the public and encourage them to participate in the process as well by discouraging these kinds of things. But as long as you have a demand, there will be a supply.”

On a side note, the Ministry of Natural Resources has been unable to discover who put up survey posts at Goff’s Caye recently. Ramclam reiterated today that the action was not sanctioned by the Ministry and is thus illegal.