Land Ministry to digitise land bank
Land being the costliest asset in realty has often been at the epicentre of land fights, property crimes and frauds. Sri Lanka’s Land Ministry now is mulling to digitise its land bank in a bid to curb these issues, a top minister said. ”There’s a proposal to digitise all lands,” John Amaratunga, Minister of Lands (in addition to his other portfolios – Tourism and Christian Religious Affairs) told the Business Times. He said that he had a discussion with some parties recently on this and their proposal was interesting. The main reasons cited for this digitisation effort are to detect and prevent fraud and to improve data analytics while streamlining processes in the ministry, he added.
In order to ensure that the lands of the country are suitably managed the Ministry of Land is assigned with the responsibilities such as preparing and implementing policies related to conserve state lands, land settlement, acquisition of lands for public purposes. Mr. Amaratunga said that the ministry has been directing the efforts in developing common systems with collaboration of all related parties. Currently there are 43 land registries across the country and it is estimated that over 20 million deeds have been stored in those registries, according to data by ministry officials.
Lawyers and Notaries are finding it difficult to find the land related information due to many problems including access and lack of space in land registries in general, they said adding that the low access of registers for investigating deeds at the Land Registry has caused major issues. A ministry official added that digitisation will help the registers against ageing, excessive handling, and damage by termites and even by natural disasters which is also an integral problem. “Removal of pages and alterations of records have also been longstanding predicaments and protecting these registers from such abuses is also a critical requirement.”
It will also pave the way towards automation of Land Registries by computerising deed registration system and facilitating amalgamation of Title Registration and Deed Registration in the long term, the ministry official said. Availability of information associated to connected transactions of a land will be an added advantage, he said adding that a digitised system would support other activities such as searching for a land by name, owner’s name and other critical parameters.