The Vola ni Kawa Bula, commonly known as the VKB, is the official Fijian register of native landowners. It is known in English as the Native Land Register. By law, all indigenous Fijians are entitled to be enrolled as members of the VKB, which is in the charge of the Native Lands Commission. Some 83 percent of Fiji's land is owned communally by the members of the VKB.
On 22 November 2005, the Native Lands Commission expressed concern that parental negligence or ignorance has resulted in an estimated 20,000 indigenous Fijians not being enrolled in the VKB. Many parents wrongly assumed, they said, that a birth certificate automatically registered every child in the VKB. Consequently, a system of automatic registration might be introduced.
Famous quotes containing the words native, land and/or register:
“O native country, repossessed by thee!
For, rather than I’ll to the West return,
I’ll beg of thee first here to have mine urn.
Weak I am grown, and must in short time fall;
Give thou my sacred relics burial.”
—Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Every new baby is a blind desperate vote for survival: people who find themselves unable to register an effective political protest against extermination do so by a biological act.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)