The allotment holders’ lobby (and it is by no means a small group of Bolesławiec residents) will surely be pleased by the response from the SLD Parliamentary Club received by councillor STANISŁAW ANDRUSIRCZKO (we wrote about this in the February issue of “Głos”). MP Marek Borowski informs us that legislative work has begun on an amendment to the Act on Employees’ Allotment Gardens, with the participation of the National Council of the Polish Allotment Holders’ Association.
Representatives of PZD drew attention to numerous cases of local government bodies breaking the law, particularly the Act on Employees’ Allotment Gardens of 6 May 1081. Cases involving the taxation of allotments, the establishment of mortgages on POD land and the sale of this land will be reported to MPs, who have undertaken to intervene each time in order to restore the situation to one compliant with the law. The legal status of gardens following the municipalisation of land is causing the greatest controversy. Legislative work will move towards transferring land used by allotment gardens under perpetual leasehold or into ownership. SLD MPs will undertake an appropriate legislative initiative whose principal objectives will be: 1/ obliging municipalities to transfer POD land—by operation of law—into perpetual usufruct to the Polish Allotment Holders’ Association, 2/ exempting PZD from perpetual usufruct fees, 3/ enabling, on the basis of an agreement between the municipality and PZD, the transfer of this land into PZD ownership.
The need to maintain the existing rights of PZD and POD provided for in the applicable Act was also recognised. We will write about the final form of the planned amendment after a decision by the Sejm of the Republic of Poland. One thing is beyond doubt: the allotment holders’ voice rings out loudly, and they must be taken into account. Let us recall that the Act of 10 May 1090 on local government enables local municipal authorities to municipalise POD property, but it failed to include a provision that POD uses state-owned land whose property is not subject to municipalisation. As a result, many voivodes municipalised allotments in such a way that some gardens were liquidated, others were pledged as security for bank loans, and still others were converted into building plots—without compensation. Will self-defence prove effective?