The Gov­ern­ment has pledged to end long-stand­ing is­sues in­volved in get­ting clear land ti­tles in this coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly in To­ba­go.

This is ac­cord­ing to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Faris Al-Rawi.

Speak­ing at a vir­tu­al town hall meet­ing or­gan­ised by the To­ba­go West Con­stituen­cy and area rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sham­fa Cud­joe on Tues­day, Al-Rawi said the Prop­er­ty Re­al Es­tate Busi­ness Soft­ware launched on Oc­to­ber 26, 2020, by his min­istry, is the first stage of the elec­tron­ic process to start the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion process.

“Once you come un­der the Reg­is­tra­tion to Ti­tle of Land Act, you get some­thing called an ab­solute ti­tle, mean­ing it is some­thing which the State can guar­an­tee as hav­ing an ab­solute pur­pose, so no need to do a ti­tle search,” the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said.

Giv­ing a brief his­to­ry of land ti­tles in To­ba­go, he said there was no for­mal land reg­is­tra­tion, so peo­ple held their doc­u­ments with Queen and Span­ish stamps in their per­son­al pos­ses­sion.

He said Hur­ri­cane Flo­ra de­stroyed most of the doc­u­ments.

Al-Rawi said the last land ti­tle leg­is­la­tion in 2000 sought to ad­dress the ti­tle is­sue but left a “ma­jor flaw” as reg­is­tra­tion of land ti­tles was vol­un­tary.

The at­tor­ney gen­er­al said the Gov­ern­ment took steps to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion and passed the Reg­is­tra­tion to Ti­tle of Land (Amend­ment) Act 2018.

He said the new act would as­sist in giv­ing ab­solute ti­tles to prop­er­ty own­ers. The ti­tles’ project would fall un­der the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and the en­tire process would be free to prop­er­ty own­ers as the Gov­ern­ment se­cured a US$25 mil­lion In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank loan in 2018 for the project, he said.

The AG al­so said the process be­gins with ad­ju­di­ca­tion.

“The de­c­la­ra­tion is made that an area is go­ing to be brought un­der the reg­is­tra­tion of ti­tle to land act. There is pub­lic dis­sem­i­na­tion of no­tice. There is a pe­ri­od for it and then all lands in a par­tic­u­lar area, say Ba­co­let, To­ba­go or Char­lot­teville, To­ba­go, you will have a de­c­la­ra­tion that is go­ing to be an or­der”.

He said once the or­der is giv­en, land sur­vey­ors vis­it the area, and peo­ple are re­quired to hand in their his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments. If there is no is­sue as­so­ci­at­ed with the prop­er­ty, the ti­tle au­to­mat­i­cal­ly goes in­to the land reg­istry.

Al-Rawi said in cas­es where there are no deeds, a sur­vey will be done and com­pared against the ex­ist­ing ge­o­graph­ic sur­vey.

If there are prob­lems with the prop­er­ty, it goes to the land tri­bunal for res­o­lu­tion.

If the tri­bunal can­not re­solve it, the mat­ter heads to court.

The at­tor­ney gen­er­al not­ed that the two ex­ist­ing sys­tems for prop­er­ty reg­is­tra­tion- deeds and Re­al Prop­er­ty Or­di­nance will con­tin­ue un­til all lands get ab­solute ti­tles.