Members of the legal fraternity are coming together to advocate for improvements at the Land Registry and a more professional way of conducting business at the agency.
Attorney-at-law Leon Rockcliffe of DeCaires, Fitzpatrick and Karran has written several letters to this newspaper in his private capacity highlighting the state of affairs at the Registry. Among these is the status of the current Registrar of Lands Juliet Sattaur whose 2004 appointment he said was illegal.
In his last missive carried in the Stabroek News letters column (2010-07-16), Rockcliffe also commented that there were individuals in the legal community who were as much to blame.
“There are at least three legal firms, all headed by senior counsel, who process mortgages from the financial institutions and who must accordingly be expected to be the principal watchmen over both the Transports and Land Registration systems that produce and are responsible for the accuracy of the land titles uttered by mortgagors as collateral for their mortgage-loans,” he said.
“Regrettably these gentle folk are apparently content to abide the patent deterioration of both systems, making no noise or written representations but temporarily enjoy their remuneration while the very substratum of their business suffers rapid deterioration,” he continued.
His comments prompted a response by way of letter to this newspaper from Senior Counsel Ralph Ramkarran of law firm Cameron and Shepherd in which he stated that he was mandated by his colleagues “to offer public support to Mr. Rockcliffe’s lone public campaign to resolve the problems to which he referred in his letter.”
According to Ramkarran, the move to publicly support Rockcliffe stemmed from the firm getting nowhere in their private efforts to have the Registry’s shortcomings addressed.
“Mr Rockcliffe is aware that, like him, we have been engaged in substantial private representations on the same issues about which he complains for the same amount of time and also without success. We did not go public, like Mr. Rockcliffe, after his private efforts failed, in the hope that our private efforts would achieve success. We persisted. We are now satisfied that our private efforts, covering several years, will not bear any fruit,” Ramkarran stated.
He added that the firm has concluded that in relation to the Registrar of Lands and the Land Registry, “nothing will happen until a calamity descends upon the public arising from the failure to address the issues of concern.”
When contacted for a comment on the attorneys’ complaints, recently appointed Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Legal Affairs Edward Wills said he was not familiar with the specifics of the issue and would need to research it.
Rockcliffe is also calling on the financial institutions to “take up the cudgel.”
“Ought they not to demonstrate becoming concern for the fortunes and fate of the land-title systems that underscore a significant degree of their financial investments?” he queried.
In his July 16 letter Rockcliffe said it was a “lamentable fact” that Sattaur should be permitted “without administrative oversight, discipline, control, guidance or legal advice to pursue a course that is stultifying the expansion of the system …”
The Presidential Secretariat, he said, must be the first to take the blame since it was there that responsibility lies for strengthening the system and ensuring its survival.
And in a letter published in the SN letter columns on 2010-05-27 Rockcliffe said that the Registry currently falls under no ministerial portfolio thereby making it a presidential responsibility, a situation he believed less than satisfactory.
“The Land Registry is the only government department not headed by an appointed minister who would be charged with ensuring its effectiveness, overseeing its operations, sponsoring its development towards serving the purpose of its establishment and answering to Cabinet … it could hardly be expected that the Head of State actually performs those duties,” Rockcliffe said
