Barbuda land is not for sale!

“Land in Barbuda will not be sold”.

This is still the stance of the Barbuda Council despite reports from Prime Minister Gaston Browne about the progress of the Barbuda Land Registry.

A few years ago, in the aftermath of devastating Hurricane Irma, the government announced plans to provide each Barbudan with official registration of the land they occupy for the nominal fee of one dollar.

But elected Council member and Chair of the Barbuda People’s Movement (BPM) John Mussington, along with several other Barbudans have been fighting this matter for some time.

Mussington during an interview with Twin Island Media said that the Council has no intention to budge on their policy even despite the Privy Council ruling against two Barbudans- Trevor Walker and Mackenzie Frank- who brought a case against the central government over lands in the sister isle.

“We will not relinquish our longstanding traditional means of managing our land system whereby every single Barbudan has equitable rights to the resources of the land. That has been the reason for our survival and how we have thrived and managed to make Barbuda a paradise with our land management policy which is communal resources. We will not relinquish that,” Mussington said.

“The Privy Council ruling does not deny our pursuit of our land management system. The Privy Council ruling in the Paradise Found case found that the two claimants will not succeed in their claim of compensation. The Privy Council ruling was not on our rights to our land management system,” he added.

The pair launched the case following the passage of the Paradise Found Act 2015 which nullified critical sections of the Barbuda Land Act 2007 that spoke to ownership of land in Barbuda.

Last June, the central government passed a law to dismantle communal land ownership on the sister isle, and representatives of the Barbuda Council and MP Walker have spoken against the change.

But with the final ruling not going in their favor last December many believed that the Council and all the defenders had no other grounds to stand on in this fight.

Some experts have even called on both sides to facilitate detailed discussions on the matter which would give both sides a greater understanding of how exactly the land registry would work.

But, with these latest comments, it seems no sort of resolution is on the horizon.