Ministry distributes Land Cards

Agriculture Minister, Clarence Rambharat, shows those present at the launch of the Land Card, the state of some of the old files at the Land Management Division. PHOTO COURTESY THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, LAND AND FISHERIES
Agriculture Minister, Clarence Rambharat, shows those present at the launch of the Land Card, the state of some of the old files at the Land Management Division. PHOTO COURTESY THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, LAND AND FISHERIES

On Friday, the first Land Cards were distributed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries to 100 people who rent State lands.

The cards were part of the Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) which should make applying for State lands, accessing and updating documents, and making queries easier for the staff of the Land Management Division (LMD) and less frustrating for clients.

Because of years of inefficient procedural and document management habits, the LMD did not know exactly how many State land parcels or tenants there were. Therefore, Government could not quantify the amount of rent and land capital being lost through expired leases, unrevised rents, change in land use, encroachments or squatting.

At the launch of the Land Card (Electronic Document Management System) at the ministry’s Head Office in Chaguanas, Agriculture Minister, Clarence Rambharat, said there were approximately 120,000 parcels of State land. These cover land for agricultural, residential, commercial, institutional, gas and utility corridors and forest reserves. Of these, at least 30,000 were agricultural parcels and the ministry was still trying to locate about 500 paper files. “This card, what it does, it saves you from having to deal with this (physical files on paper). It removes the risk of a file disappearing and delaying and so on. And it gives all of us an opportunity to deal with information in real time.”

According to Rambharat, so far, 1,800 agricultural files had been digitised and cards ready to be distributed. Speaking to Newsday he said the staff of seven digitised 400 to 500 files a month. “A key aspect of the creation of a digitised file is the documents are different categories – lease documents, correspondence, survey plans, approvals, complaints, etc. In each category the documents are in chronological order. One person provided quality control assurance by testing each digitised file. In this fiscal year I would add more staff once it does not compromise quality.”

The land card, equipped with a barcode which would be mirrored on the corresponding digital file, would make files easy to find, access, and update so clients would not have to wait days, weeks or months for their information in order to pay rent, follow up on the status of leases, renew leases, or other transactions.

In addition, in the near future, in order to give clients of the ministry more efficient service delivery, a call centre would be established. “I asked myself, when these people call, how are you going to give them information? They’re going to have to interact with the same Land Management Division and the files and the calls and so on. By having some electronic files to work with and more added, we would be able to do the second part of this, which is the call centre, which allows people to call and ask questions. It allows people to make requests and share information.”

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