Habet ‘Totally Disappointed’ as Court Upholds Fowler Works Land Deal

A court ruling may have settled the legal question, but for many families in Santa Familia, the land fight is still deeply personal. The Court of Appeal has upheld the controversial 2020 sale of almost two thousand acres of national land to Fowler Works Enterprises, land that Cayo Northeast Area Representative Orlando Habet says residents and farmers have occupied for generations. The court found that the sale agreements were valid and that government breached the contracts when it refused to transfer the titles after the change in administration. Now, the case heads back to the High Court to determine damages, and taxpayers could be looking at a multimillion-dollar payout. But Habet insists the land should remain with the families who have lived and farmed there for decades.

 

Orlando Habet, Area Representative, Cayo Northeast

“Totally disappointed because firstly, it is in my constituency. Secondly, I found out almost a few weeks after the 2020 elections, one of my constituents asked me to help him secure his title for his lot of land where he was living in Santa Familia. And then he gave me these documents that then my former opponent, Mr. John August, had left there.  And when I saw one thousand nine hundred ten acres sold to Fowler Works Enterprises, but most of this land has been occupied by the people of Santa Familia for thirty, forty years. Some of them got it handed over from their parents to the son. And I took it to the minister, and the minister immediately put a stop to it. But then the person who had already purchased the land about twenty days before the elections of 2020, took it to court, and now the court is saying that the government has to pay him ten million dollars. That’s ridiculous. I don’t even think he knows where the land is. He has never put foot on the land. He won’t put foot on that land if you have forty fifty local farmers with their land there.”

 

Fowler Works Enterprises was represented by Senior Counsel Dean Barrow and attorney Agassi Finnegan.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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