Which is why the financial reparations being offered to the farmers are currently, in legal terms anyway, voluntary. The valuation of the land is based on other legislation, formulated in 2011, and is decided by a committee consisting of locals, state officials and representatives of South Oil.
The compensatory payout is calculated according to what is on the land as well as the land itself – this includes buildings and planted fields, and allegedly also takes into account what the work that’s been put in and what farmer will lose financially in the following year.
“Basically the area of Qurna – the city and its surrounding area – is really equivalent to an oil field. That’s why the actual oil field has the same name,” reasons one oil company employee, off the record. “There are old privileges at work here and high expectations of investment from the oil sector. The compensation payments are just being made out of humanitarian grounds.”
And even here there are difficulties. The committee must also discern between those farmers working their land officially and those who are squatter farmers. “A lot of the properties are run by farmers who have never had any documents saying they own the land,” committee member for the West Qurna oil fields and local mayor, Basem Saleh Radhban, points out.
Radhban also has his doubts about the protests against the payouts. “Certainly some farmers are happy enough with them,” he said. “We know this because of how many enquiries we keep getting from farmers who want to have their properties investigated for oil potential as quickly as possible.”
This story was first published by WPI Iraq.
(Photo credit: Muffet)
Comments are closed.