Word: fiji
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...bulldozed. "I couldn't believe it. It was like something hit me here," he says, tapping his heart and slowly rocking his ailing son. When the eviction is enforced, Prasad and his family will have to squat elsewhere-in a place where living conditions are even worse. In Fiji, the Prasads won't be the only ones...
...main social problems facing Fijians today," he says. "These are very poor people who are already in a cycle of poverty. Whole families are suffering." Lingham, who resigned his post six months ago, says the government's response is hopelessly inadequate. "If something is not done, half of Fiji will be living in these settlements in 20 years' time...
...drift of rural families into cities in search of better jobs and improved living conditions is part of a global trend, but in Fiji the country's land-ownership policies have exacerbated the problem. Laws passed in the 1970s obliged non-indigenous farmers to take 30-year leases on the land they worked. As the leases expired, the Government encouraged indigenous Fijian landowners not to renew them, but instead to farm the land themselves. The non-indigenous farmers were given cash payouts to leave, but their workers received nothing...
...Fiji's government pledged $3.5 million to provide housing for the squatters, but Lingham says what's needed is at least $10 million a year for the next ten years. Between 1992 and 2000, the government developed only 1,572 lots to house 7,500 people. According to his research, by 2028 approximately 13,100 leases will have expired, forcing at least 3,500 farming families to seek resettlement. Last month, Fiji's new government, installed in a coup last year by Commodore Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama, announced it had set aside $1 million for Squatter Upgrading and Resettlement...
...court decision earlier this year appears to offer the squatters some hope. The Seventh Day Adventist church sought to remove residents from one of Fiji's oldest squatter settlements, on a steep hill and riverside land at Tamavua in Suva's northern suburbs. The church alleged it had legally purchased the squatters' home sites from local chiefs. But the squatters, known locally as "blackbirders" (Solomon Islanders brought to Fiji to work on plantations in the 1930s), argued that more than 40 years ago they were given permission by the chiefs to live on the land. Fiji High Court Justice Roger...