THE Ministry of Land and the Environment is setting up a squatter management unit to deal with illegal settlements on government land.

Permanent secretary in the ministry, Donovan Stanberry, says that the Ministry of Finance and planning has already approved the posts and they will be filled after March.

Speaking at Tuesday’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting at Gordon House, Stanberry admitted that there was no formal squatter policy, but that the ministry was drafting one.

In the interim, the ministry has established guidelines to manage the whole matter of squatting.

“Indeed, we have turned on the heat on the matter of squatting where it occurs on government lands,” Stanberry said, noting that in December the ministry carried out a ‘very significant’ operation in the heavily squatted Negril area.

“It didn’t generate the kind of fanfare because it was preceded by numerous notices to the occupants and it wasn’t sustained. But, it is really an indication of the seriousness with which we intend to treat the matter of squatting, because squatting has implications for the environment, it has implications for security and it has implications for public health,” the permanent secretary said.

In terms of private lands being squatted on, he said that landowners have to exercise more vigilance in monitoring their own properties, as the new unit will deal, principally, with crown lands.

“The battle against squatting is only going to be won by eternal vigilance and by enforcement,” Stanberry said. “Every single case of squatting is, in a sense, a regulatory problem because anybody that puts up a building, whether legal or illegal, the local authority has every power to go and ask that person for the building permit. And if one cannot be produced, irrespective of your tenure, the problem can be solved right away.”