Landowners should be empowered to hold their own quarry licences so they directly benefit from resources extracted from their land, a Sabeto landowner told the review committee examining Fiji’s Mining Act 1965.
Emosi Raurau made the call during public consultations on the Act in Sabeto, Nadi, arguing the current licensing system favours contractors rather than the people who own the soil. “Landowners should be given licences,” Raurau told the committee. He said contractors historically secured licences and, when extracting materials such as gravel, “try their hardest to secure a license,” leaving landowning units with little control over operations or the revenue that could fund local development projects.
Raurau told the review panel the imbalance in licensing has constrained landowners’ ability to meet development goals and perpetuated a power dynamic skewed towards companies carrying out extraction. His comments are among a string of submissions to the review that highlight tensions between commercial operators and customary landowners over access, control and economic returns from quarrying activity.
Responding to Raurau’s concerns, technical mining advisor Dr Apete Soro said the problem is entwined with how administrative authority is organised rather than an absence of legal tools. “Existing legislative frameworks could provide a solution to the impasse,” Dr Soro told the consultation, while stressing that final administrative power currently rests with central institutions. “For everything else, the power rests with the Director of Lands and TLTB (iTaukei Lands and Trust Board),” he said, pointing to the role those bodies play in licensing and land-management decisions.
Dr Soro’s remarks underline a central challenge identified by participants: even where statutes allow flexibility, the day-to-day exercise of licensing authority is concentrated in government and land-trust offices. That centralisation, contributors argue, can make it difficult for individual mataqali or other landowning units to obtain licences or negotiate terms directly with contractors.
The submissions in Sabeto feed into the broader review of the Mining Act 1965, a law long governing mineral and quarrying activity in Fiji. While the review committee is still gathering views from communities and experts, the Sabeto session made clear that calls for more direct licensing rights for landowners are a prominent concern in areas affected by quarrying. Advocates say allowing landowners to hold licences could increase local income, strengthen oversight of extraction practices and give communities greater say over land use.
The review committee will consider the Sabeto input alongside other public consultations as it prepares recommendations on how to update the Mining Act. Stakeholders at the session said they expect the review to address both statutory provisions and administrative arrangements so that licence reform translates into practical control and benefit for landowners.
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