Paradox of landless squatting

April 15, 2000
3 MIN READ
A
A+
A-

Nepalgunj, Apr. 15: Despite many years of efforts by the government and the non-government sector, the problem of landless squatting still remains unresolved.

Rather the problem is found to be getting more out of hand with more and more people becoming landless squatters.

One of the primary factors responsible for the increasing number of the landless squatters is that even those owning land are selling their land driven by the notion that the government provides land for free to the landless squatters.

The landless squatters problem has now become a national level problem. But it is more pronounced in the Terai belt of the country.

It is in this backdrop that the South Asia Partnership-Nepal (SAP-Nepal) office has come out with a report on the problem. The SAP-Nepal report among other things recommends that a national concept should be developed to check the rapid population growth, awareness programmes should be launched, a national inventory of landowners be prepared, politicization of the problem should be stopped and land provided only to the genuine landless squatters to resolve the problem.

Similarly, the report recommends creating job opportunities for landless squatters, stop the practice of providing free land to the squatters and provision of concessional loans to them to start self-employment enterprises.

The SAP-Nepal report is based on the study and a survey carried out by the office in landless squatters’ settlements in Sankhariya and Reshampur of Bardiya district.

The study found that most of the landless squatters population in Sakhariya is made of the migrants from Dailekh, Jajarkot, Salyan, Dang, Pokhara, Chitwan and other districts. The landless squatters in Sakhariya number 105 families with a total population of 600.

The landless squatters’ problem resolution commission had allocated land to these families in 2049 B.S.

Similarly, a total of 77 landless squatters households were settled at Reshampur, Ward No. 3 of Deudakala VDC. There are only 20 landless squatters families permanently settled there at present.

The landless squatters of this area are the migrant families from Dang, Salyan, Dailekh and Jajarkot, it is learnt.

It has been found that since these landless squatters happened to be settled there at the time when a particular political party was in the government, the areas have remained neglected in terms of development when another rival party is in government.

Moreover, the issue of the problems of the landless squatters is found to be highly politicized while the landless squatters continue to suffer from countless many problems.

The landless people have many social, economic and educational problems.

There is also public complaint that these landless families were settled down in Shankhari and Reshampur of Bardiya district without identifying the genuine landless settlers from others and without verifying their land holding as a result of which many fake landless settlers also became successful in grabbing public land.

Lack of suitable land for agriculture, migration, population growth, deterioration in production and unemployment are some of the main factors aggravating the problem in the country, it is learnt.