May 07, 2012- Post Courier
By TODAGIA KELOLA
THE National Court has quashed a decision by the National Lands
Board and the Minister for Lands in awarding a company, Vitroplant,three
agriculture leases to plant palm oil on Woodlark Island.
The
decision by the Lands Board and the Minister was quashed after another company
Woodlark Mining challenged the decision on the basis that it also has three
exploration licenses over the same land in question.Woodlark Mining has been
conducting mineral exploration on Woodlark Island, Milne Bay Province since
1980, and it continues to hold three (3) exploration licenses, i.e EL1279,
EL1465 and EL1172.
The other company Vitroplant
is a company incorporated in Papua New Guinea, Vitroplant applied for three
agricultural leases to plant oil palm on Woodlark Island.
In
May 9 2007, the then Minister for Lands and Physical Planning, the Dr Puka
Temu, granted Vitroplant the three agricultural leases.
Vitroplant had proposed to plant oil palm on 60,000
hectares of the Woodlark Island. The agricultural leases encompass all that
land which Woodlark Mining was holding exploration license for on Woodlark
Island. The agricultural lease was issued despite Woodlark Mining holding
exploration licenses for the Island.
Woodlark Mining had submitted that it had exploration licences for the
land and therefore, the land was not available for leasing by the State and as
such the leases should be set aside.
Deputy
Chief Justice Gibbs Salika who presided over the matter in his decision stated
“I have no doubt in my mind that, had the Department
done a due diligence check on the subject land it would have found that the
land already had mining exploration licenses over it, that is at least EL1279
and EL1172.
In
granting Woodlark Minings Judicial Review application he said
“The plaintiff in my opinion did have substantial interest
in the subject land and ought to have been informed or notified of what was
going on especially notification of the meeting to consider Vitroplants
application for Agricultural lease.
“In this case the plaintiff made
the submission that it had pre-existing mining exploration tenement over the
same subject land. Therefore the land was not available for leasing. The Land
Board fell into error in not according or granting any opportunity to the
plaintiff to be heard and secondly as a result of the failure fell into error
in granting the Agricultural Leases.”
