‘Stop land compensation, freeze homestead filings’

Gov. Benigno R. Fitial announced on Friday plans to stop payment of land compensation and to reinstate the moratorium on homestead applications.

Fitial said during his weekly press conference that only $88,000 now remained of the $28-million fund allocated to compensate private landowners whose properties had been seized by government for infrastructure projects and other public purposes.

According to the governor, there are a little over 100 landowners who had benefited from the land compensation fund. At least 193 other claimants have yet to receive compensation.

The defunct Marianas Public Lands Authority had reportedly awarded nearly $8 million—a quarter of the total land compensation fund—to two families.

Fitial also said that he would restore the moratorium on homestead applications because of the dwindling amount of public land available on Saipan.

There are close to 4,000 applications for residential homesteads currently pending with the Department of Public Lands. About 3,500 of these applications are from Saipan. The remaining 500 are from Tinian and Rota.

A three-year homestead moratorium was lifted by the former MPLA in August 2005, at the request of then Gov. Juan N. Babauta. That moratorium had applied to applications for villages and agricultural homesteads for the islands of Saipan and Rota.

“We have contracted a company to do a land use plan pursuant to Public Law 15-2,” acting DPL Secretary John Del Rosario, referring to the new law that abolished MPLA as an autonomous agency and transferred its functions to the Department of Public Lands. “That (land use plan) will tell us exactly how much is left for homestead purposes.”

Del Rosario said that Saipan is in a most critical situation because it has the least amount of public land available.

“At some point in the near future, we will have to start thinking about building upwards rather than giving land sideways. We will have to address this issue about homestead and work with other agencies such as the Housing Corp. The need for land is growing, but the amount of land remains the same,” he added.

The governor blamed the land problem on politics.

“Back in the Japanese administration, homestead lots were very small. Only when politics came into play that lots became bigger. And they continue to become bigger. We will have to revisit the homestead program that was implemented during the Japanese period,” Fitial said.