Efforts are underway to appoint a Registrar of the Land Registry, according to Attorney-General Basil Williams, who says that with documents not being signed by Juliet Sattaur, who was recently sent on leave, the department is facing a backlog.
“We recognize that it is a section that should have its own registrar, its own staff and we see the difficulties that have apparently surmounted the last registrar (Sattaur) and we will have to make an effort very quickly to remedy that situation.” he asserted during an interview with Stabroek News on Thursday in his Carmichael Street office.
It was Minister of State Joseph Harmon who informed the media at a July 1 post cabinet press briefing that Sattaur had been sent on leave to facilitate an investigation into the operation of the registry and “certain financial matters,”.
Williams told Stabroek News that prior to her being sent on leave he had received quite a lot of letters written “in respect of that woman while she was there”. Williams is a senior member of the APNU+AFC coalition government which took office in mid-May.
Asked whether the registry couldn’t function without someone in place to sign documents, he said that “it wasn’t functioning even when she (Sattaur) was there. Their (members of the public) complaint was that she wasn’t signing anything…in fact there were backlogs for years and we have been looking at that and looking to remedy it and you will soon see the results of what we are putting in place”.
Asked how soon this remedy can be seen he responded “very soon”.
Though Williams spoke of her not functioning while she held that post, Sattaur had said in a letter to this newspaper that she had signed off “In Order” transfers for the year 2014. Many have been uplifted by the respective lawyers.
She said that transfers filed for 2015 are being checked as far as April to date; mortgages filed for 2015 are being processed for June; corrections returned to the Land Registry by the respective lawyers are being processed for August 2014; Ministry of Housing transfers are being processed for 30th January, 2014. For this Ministry the registry has 8,391 transfers filed for 2014; and applications for Lost Grosse/Mutilated Grosse and Certificates of Sale are being processed for June 2014.
Attorney at law Leon Rockcliffe in a letter that was published in Thursday’s edition of Stabroek News said that since Sattaur had been sent on leave work there has been stalled as there is no one to affix an official signature to documents. He also called on the relevant authorities to appoint a suitable person to this position as a matter of urgency.
He said that he telephoned the Land Registry on Friday 31st July, 2015 and found that “there was no person legally empowered to sign any document requiring official signature. Indeed, no effective business could be concluded there”. Noting that as a result of this occurrence that transactions are “in a state of paralysis”, he said that such a situation is without precedent.
Rockcliffe said that on the purported appointment of Sattaur as Registrar of Lands in early 2004, it was drawn by him to the attention of the Chief Justice and the then Attorney General Doodnauth Singh “that her appointment without more, would be illegal in the light of the provisions of section 7 (1) of the Land Registry Act”.
He said that it was clear, therefore, that the purported appointment of any other category of person without the repeal or amendment of that section must be illegal. “That was my view then expressed and which remains today. Amazingly, the Act too remains unaltered to this day which I propose as a reflection of the intransigence of the government of that day aided by the lassitude of the legal profession, quite a few of whose senior members aware of this defect continue to process to their obvious financial benefit transactions that might well be subject to question on account of the blatant illegality of the appointment of Ms Sattaur as Registrar”, he said.
Further, he wrote that now, it occurs that the very illegality which government had comfortably ignored when in parliamentary opposition “has been taken into account by the present administration by the fact that upon their summary dispatch of Ms Sattaur on leave they felt compelled to turn to the current Registrar of Deeds and Deputy Registrar of Deeds to perform an act of rescue of the system by diverting their energies and attention from their already demanding obligations under the Deeds Registry Act”.
He said that since such an emergency operation would be both physically and administratively oppressive, that form of rescue has “sensibly been abandoned, resulting in the present departmental paralysis”.
He expressed hope that the Attorney General has prepared for emergency placement before Parliament, the requisite amendment to the Land Registry Act “to facilitate the legal appointment of some worthy persons to occupy the positions of Registrar and Deputy Registrar of Lands without further ado”.
Over the years members of the public and the legal fraternity have been complaining bitterly about the state of the Land Registry.
