Dear Editor,
On February 8, 2010, I caused to be hand-delivered to the offices of the Minister of Legal Affairs, the Permanent Secretary to the said Ministry and the Registrar of Deeds a letter addressed to the said Minister dated February 3, 2010 dealing with aspects of the performance of the department known as the Deeds Registry. It probably reflects the culture of the present day that not one of these public officials saw fit to afford me the courtesy even of an acknowledgment of receipt of that document. They probably figured that the writer would become frustrated by the long wait and forget the matter. If so, they are quite wrong! They clearly have no taste for the niceties of dialogue. Hence it becomes a public issue through the kind courtesies of your good newspaper.
Having spent nearly two decades in clerical and administrative positions in that government department, participated in several IADB funded consultancies since 1994, lectured to staff members and practised privately as an attorney-at-law for the past 19 years, I may just be qualified to make some critical comment with a view to redressing the deterioration and patent deficiencies that abound there.
It is necessary to deal early with some possible deceptions arising from the events of a few months ago. With USAID funding, there was launched a project for the Reform of the Deeds Registry Business Regist-ration and Incorporation Process – a one stop shop which would facilitate a reduced time for that incorporation process along with simultaneous registration at three other governmental agencies, viz GRA, NIS and Go-Invest. That is all well and good but has absolutely no relationship with the essential business with which the Deeds Registry is charged. Indeed it is the probable success of this project with its mainly commercial implications that poses the problem of delusion that the Deeds Registry is on a firm keel.
The commercial business at present conducted at the Deeds Registry includes Intellectual Property such as Trade Marks & Designs, Patents and Bills of Sale along with the incorporation of companies and registration of business names, these last two being embraced by the one stop project. There is, accordingly, compelling argument for the Commercial Registry to be established in some other location and possibly under some other aegis like the Ministry of Trade, to meet the demands of modern-day commerce where it may grow with staff technically trained in the law relating to the several spheres of its clearly commercial business. In short, the Deeds Registry proper can no longer tolerate and accommodate such an operation within its present physical borders along with the performance of its statutory obligations under the Deeds Registry Act. The two must go their separate ways.
It is these obligations that remain under threat and which I propose for serious attention. They are set out at section 7 of the Deeds Registry Act and are essential reading for any assessment of the performance of this department. Section 7(k) sums up the extremely serious charge upon the Registrar: “to keep all registers, including land and mortgage registers requisite for the due performance by him of any of his duties aforesaid and for the establishment of an official system of registration calculated to furnish security of title and an easy reference thereto.”
The other functions, as the name suggests, embrace the registration of contracts, notarial and other deeds, powers of attorney, etc. There appears, from my observation, to be very satisfactory performance of these functions, particularly in relation to the surge of Change of Name Deeds Poll and Powers of Attorney which are an item of growing public demand. It is the land titles administration that calls for deep examination and very urgent repair.
The very basic land registers upon the accuracy of which the nation relies for information on land titles under the Roman-Dutch ‘Transports’ system are in a state of real distress. They present a marked and continuing deterioration in their condition attributable to clear supervisory negligence on the part of the Registrars and senior staff of the conveyancing section of the Registry over a decade or more. In recent years it has been the custom at the end of the secondary school year to employ work-study students, some of whom, operating without proper supervision, have made their understandable contribution to the inaccuracy of recordings in the land registers.
The situation worsens. The act and the system also require the maintenance of encumbrance registers for the recording of equally important material such as mortgages and leases and the faithful and accurate annotation of these transactions on the original land titles affected thereby. These registers have not been maintained since 1982. The lawyers for the financial institutions whose mortgages and other business are premised on the accuracy of the land titles presented to them as collateral could not and should not be happy to have this situation continue.
There is, however, a far more disturbing aspect to be considered, namely, the debilitating affect of an inefficient land-title recording system and the corresponding failure of encumbrance registration upon the process legally termed ‘Parate Execution.’ Now, Parate Execution is a statutory process whereby local government bodies like the Mayor and City Council, town councils and related organs and councils may cause rate-payers’ property to be sold at execution for non-payment of general rate when the ordinary exhortations fail. Well, it so happens that an essential preliminary activity in that process is the certification by the Registrar of Deeds relating initially to the title-ownership of the property and later to the existence of any mortgages or leases thereon.
Since land sold at Parate Execution is sold free of any such mortgages or leases, the Registrar of the Supreme Court, whose Marshal will eventually sell the land at execution, is under a duty to inform the mortgagee (the bank or building society) or the lessee of the existence of such mortgage or lease.
This, Editor, must therefore be regarded by any governmental administration as an extremely serious situation where by the failings of one of its crucial agencies, the Deeds Registry, there is an inherent obstacle to the hallowed and historically effective means of recovery of rates due to its local government bodies.
Although there are other hindrances that have contributed to the absence of Parate Execution sales for the past 20 years, these sales will resume some day and the Registrar must prepare for that event.
In my letter to the Minister of Legal Affairs which I now copy to you as background information, I raise several other issues impacting on the quality of performance of the Deeds Registry. I name only a few:-
* The almost total absence of internal training on the technical aspects of Registry practice.
* A marked deterioration in the academic and intellectual quality and general knowledge on the part of middle-level clerks most of whom have never even read or been provided with a copy of the Deeds Registry Act under which they operate. (Their faithfulness, zeal and dedication are no substitute for basic legal education.)
* The absence of a qualified legal practitioner at any level.
* The total lack of accommodation for attorneys-at-law who may visit in relation to queries on their submitted material. (I acknowledge this past interaction with lawyers as a healthy basis for informational and intellectual growth on the part of the staff – but that was long ago!)
* A similar lack of accommodation for public officials from such important agencies as the Guyana Revenue Authority, Ministries of Works or Agriculture, Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission, the Privatization Unit and Valuations Division of the Ministry of Finance.
* On the spot photocopying facility.
I raise these matters of lack of accommodation as a further argument for the re-location of the Commercial Registry and vacating of space for the expansion of the Deeds Registry both in terms of personnel and recording and registration facilities which are a crucial factor in the efficient performance of this most essential governmental agency.
The foregoing comments do not seek to cover the parlous situation at the New Amsterdam and Suddie Sub-Registries. Enough for today!
By your kind permission I shall shortly address the current predicament attending the country’s Land Registration System.
Yours faithfully,
Leon O Rockcliffe
Attorney-at-Law
