Dear Editor,
In an Extraordinary issue of the Official Gazette No. 175/2010 dated Saturday 13th November, 2010, and issued out of the Presidential Secretariat in the week commencing November 15, 2010, there appears Order No. 31 of 2010 in the name of the Minister of Legal Affairs purporting to appoint the 1st day of October, 2010 as the day on which the Deeds Registry Authority Act 1999 “shall come into force.” The 1st day of October, 2010 – “The appointed day.”
This Order appears to be an illegality in the light of the clear provisions by Parliament at section 7 of the Act. It states very clearly: “Before the appointed day the Government and the Registry shall, with the approval of the Public Service Commission, notify the officers and employees of the Registry that the Registry wishes to retain them as officers and employees after the appointed day and such officers and employees shall be engaged on terms and conditions as may be agreed upon between the Registry and each person so employed and, which taken as a whole, are no less favourable than those applicable to him immediately before the date and the Registry shall, in respect of the persons so employed, be the successor of the Government with regard to such officers’ and employees’ leave and superannuation rights and benefits whether accrued, carried, inchoate or contingent.”
Well, that most important and clearly worded stipulation by Parliament as a patent precondition to the establishment of the appointed day has not been observed, at least in relation to the required notification to the employees. In fact, most of the employees with whom I spoke on November 25, 2010, were not even aware of such legislation as the Deeds Registry Authority Act and, not surprisingly, denied any communication with them whether written or oral on the subject.
Our Parliament must be seen as wanting the officers and employees to be afforded the opportunity to consider whether they wished to remain with the new entity at all. It is only after such an exercise that the Minister would know of the numbers available to staff the new entity. Hence that precondition.
It is upon this simple but telling non-observance of the preconditions stipulated by section 7 of the Act that I seek to impugn the validity of the purported ministerial Order and which surely warrants some response by the Minister. In view of the legal and administrative changes to the character and operations of the Deeds Registry that would flow from the coming into force of the Act, it is crucial that the Minister avail himself of the advice of the Attorney General, the constitutional chief legal advisor to the government, or some other source of wise and reliable legal counsel.
It is important to remember that responsibility for the conduct and operations of the Deeds Registry has been placed by the President upon the Minister of Legal Affairs who is accordingly charged with obeying every obligation of the Registry imposed by section 7 of the Act.
It must also be appreciated that upon the coming into force of the Act the Deeds Registry would become a separate body corporate free of the Public Service Commission and Ministry, but under the effective control of the Minister with the Registrar as CEO appointing subordinate staff below the level of Deputy Registrar. Indeed, it is not practical to examine in these columns the amazing feats expected of the new body. One must read the provisions of sections 5 and 6 of the Act to appreciate that the impoverished quality of staff both at the Ministry and the Registry as at present constituted provide no rational basis for the quantum leap envisaged by the drafters of the Act. Such confusion is difficult to imagine by anyone committed to rational business administration.
There are several other aspect of the Act that warrant re-examination, for example the curious composition of the Advisory Board (section 9), but I withhold comment in the interest of the more urgent decision on the quality and validity of the purported Order.
Editor, you may rightly enquire if I have adopted the gentlemanly course of communicating my doubts on the validity of the Order to the Minister concerned. Regrettably, the Minister has treated with utter contempt and has declined even to acknowledge receipt of important correspondence from me on the subject of the Deeds Registry. He may have been expressing an understandable preference for the quality of your letter pages.
Yours faithfully,
Leon O Rockcliffe
