Dear Editor
The non-appointment of a Registrar of Deeds since at least the year 2000, must be regarded as a remarkable display of a contradiction of the usual official proclamations about the efficacious management and delivery of critical services, like those provided by the Deeds Registry to: legal personnel and institutions; financial institutions, business entities of varying categories (local and overseas) and individual clients.
Despite frequent reminders, the absence of a qualified head of a strategic government agency has been persistently overlooked, by at least three Ministers of Legal Affairs, including the current incumbent, to whom relevant correspondence has been addressed since his assumption of office; but who appears to be distracted by more mundane and news-making activities, which could hardly add value to the performance of the Agency’s wider responsibilities.
What needs to be repeated (even ad nauseam) is that the administration, over the aforementioned period, has expended considerable amounts of donor funds (in retrospect) most cavalierly, when consideration is given to the inputs of at least four Consultancies, including: the upgrading of infrastructure, the installation of electronic information systems intended to establish linkages with the GRA, Go-Invest and the NIS, in the context of a highly touted ‘Competitiveness Programme’ managed out of the Ministry of Tourism, Industry and Commerce; all complemented by comprehensive recommendations for organisational and operational restructuring.
As is well recognised in most project-designed developmental exercises, human resource skills and competencies constitute a critical success factor. In the instant case however, a precarious situation may well develop if ever the current ‘acting’ Registrar (patently overstressed from performing at least three grades above his/her substantive position) were to become suddenly indisposed (indeed in the current dispensation even normal leave does not appear to be an option).
How is it proposed to address the ensuing non-delivery by the Deeds Registry across the three counties of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice which have to be traversed by this lone official – thus involving the other dimension of physical safety on the job?
Does not the legal profession stop to ponder how negatively their own and their clients’ interests could be affected, if any emergency should immobilise the present single ‘authorised’ representative of the Deeds Registry?
This realisation must also apply to the banking and other stakeholders whose businesses depend so much on the services and products dispensed by this unsupported and under-equipped component of the Ministry of Legal Affairs.
Yours faithfully,
E B John
