Dear Editor,

I expect that Parliament (the National Assembly) by tradition will go into recess for about two months from mid August.  I ought to follow their example in that regard but, regrettably I cannot do so without presenting a summary of my thoughts and observations recently expressed on the fate of our country’s two main land-title systems as operated at the Deeds Registry and the Land Registry respectively.  They do not constitute a hobby-horse on my part as some might disrespectfully conclude, but are rather matters of deep abiding concern and importance to the national interest.

I remind our readers of my earlier observation that for more than sixteen years since my first public commentary in March, 1996, I am yet to discover, meet or hear of one government functionary who has manifested even a minimal interest in the two land-titles department.  My first involvement was as a co-consultant with USA lawyer Steven Hendricks in July, 1994 under the aegis of the IDB.  Thereafter there have been diverse other consultancies embracing the Deeds Registry in some of which I was further involved, but none of which produced any identifiable result in the government’s hands.  The factor of note is that all of these exercises which concern our domestic obligations have been donor-driven, ie inspired and funded by some international developmental agency and never upon the initiative of the Guyana Government.

The Deeds Registry has been included in the portfolio of the Ministry of Legal Affairs for more than ten years with an ‘acting’ Registrar for a similar period.  At least where the Deeds Registry is concerned, it has been plagued by a most undistinguished ministerial performance and permanent-secretarial attention that may fairly be described as disastrous.  There are no present indications that we may expect improvement.

I must spare you a repetition of the entire catalogue of administrative concerns so recently published, but I am impelled to re-state a few:-
● Two Registrars and staff with no legal qualification running departments governed by laws and regulations.
● Departmental management a foreign concept
● Staff uninspired, technically untrained, and woefully underpaid having regard to the performance expected of them.
● Land registers and title records incomplete or in a state of disrepair.
● Physical space for expansion of important statutory services at both Registries
● Lack of basic administrative tools for staff-copies of laws, maps etc
● Deprivation of interaction with legal profession; inadequate service to other public-sector agencies like the GRA, Ministries of Finance, Works, and Drainage & Irrigation
I have recently directed accusatory comments particularly in relation to the Land  Registry, toward certain elements of the legal profession and with minimal verbal reaction.  I hope it is realized that those comments apply in equal or even greater measure to the Deeds Registry with its wider ambit of responsibilities and operations.  However, it has just dawned upon me that I have a far wider target to which the arrows of accusation may be directed:  the opposition, or minority political parties as I prefer to term them.

In recent weeks we have witnessed on all sides a vibrant pre-occupation with the choice of presidential candidate to head each party’s list of candidates in the year of grace 2011.  Well, I find it difficult to understand that they are all prepared to inherit and accept the sorry mess that now threatens to engulf these two land title systems.  Don’t they read your good news paper?  Are not the major two oppositionist parties headed by lawyers who ought to have some closer appreciation than their constituents regarding the matters that occasion me such concern?  Freedom of Information is good!  Local Government Reform is good!  But so are a well informed public who can access the Deeds or Land Registry for essential information on the holding of lands across the country.  Local government reform would also be expected to embrace and advocate the sustainment of accurate land title systems that facilitate the collection of general rates which are the virtual life-blood of the functioning of the Local Democratic Council.

One ought not to have to preach to a serious political party the essential virtue of so basic an amenity as a properly funded, well established and reliable land ownership record.

The opposition parties ought to bear in mind that according to our constitution they are part of the government even though a minority.  Accordingly, they bear an affirmative obligation to argue for and hold the governing party to its duty to execute its primary obligation of ensuring the integrity of the services with which the government is charged, namely, the sustention of an efficient and reliable land-title administration.

I find it gravely disappointing that political parties could be so narrow sighted and myopic as not to realize that the success to which they claim to aspire would entail the inheritance of these very basic national problems which they are in a present position to redress.

But I dare not despair.  I am ‘grateful’ that while I await just reaction on the part of those responsible, I enjoy access to your goodly letter pages for publication of these concerns which I express only in the public interest.

Yours faithfully,
Leon O Rockcliffe