Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon says government has noted the criticisms of the Land Registry in the press and is currently preparing a comprehensive response.
The land registry has been severely criticized by attorney-at-law Leon Rockcliffe who has long campaigned for urgent changes at both the land and deeds registry. Recently, Rockcliffe’s detailed observations about the operations at the land registry were supported by Senior Counsel Ralph Ramkarran of the law firm of Cameron and Sheppard.
The Office of the President has responsibility for the Land Registry and when questioned on Thursday at his weekly post-cabinet briefing about the criticisms being made Luncheon told reporters that the government is examining the allegations and the points that have been made. However, he was not prepared to pronounce on the issues.
“We continue to solicit responses from the personnel, specifically the Registrar and I am certain, I can assure you that we will… ensure a public response to those concerns”, he stated. He said that government’s response has not been fully crafted.
According to Luncheon, they could speak of generalities at this time, but would prefer an opportunity to present the most comprehensive of responses to the matters raised by the attorneys. “Bear with us as we work to produce [ a response] I wouldn’t call it the magnum opus but it would be the most comprehensive of responses to these matters that they have raised in the media”, he added.
Rockcliffe had detailed his frustrations with the Land Registry in addition to noting several possible solutions to effect positive changes. Among the issues he raised were that the registrar lacks the legal qualification to govern in keeping with the regulations; untrained and underpaid staff and land registers and title records incomplete or in state of disrepair.
The attorney had said too that his correspondence to the relevant authorities have all gone unanswered.
Subsequent to Rockcliffe’s persistent campaign, Ramkarran came out saying his firm among others in the legal fraternity was interested in seeing improvements at the Land Registry in addition to greater professionalism at the agency. 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.”
