Urban governance: Urban Unit set to start work on land record automation

A meeting to finalise the plan was postponed after changes in CM’s schedule

LAHORE:

The Urban Sector Planning and Management Unit has completed preliminary research and is set to start work on preparation of a database of land records of major cities in the province, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Urban Unit Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Nasir Javed said a meeting planned for August 24 (this Monday) to finalise the details of the project was postponed after last minute changes in the chief minister’s schedule.

Javed said in the first phase automation of land records would be started in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Multan.

He said efficiency of land and housing markets in urban areas would improve with automation of land records. He said automation of record and its online access would reduce reliance on patwaris (revenue officials) and help reduce corruption in the Revenue Department.

The CEO said he hoped automation of land records would boost economic activity in the province.

He said manually prepared property deeds of the Revenue Department were no longer accepted as collateral by banks and other financial institutions to issue loans to their customers. He said banks accepted property deeds issued only by some private housing schemes because these real estate developers had a reputation for credibility. He said it was easier to identify the owner of a property in these schemes compared to owners of property managed by the Revenue Department.

In a recent meeting, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had directed officials concerned to also prepare a plan for the establishment of a regulatory body for land record management in the province (Land Record Management Information Authority).

The provincial government has already completed computerisation of land records in rural areas (24,000 villages) of 143 tehsils. The scope of the project is now being extended to the sub-tehsil level.

A research paper published by the Punjab Board of Revenue had stated that based on land record data there were around 20 million land owners in the province.

The paper had highlighted lack of updates in a training programme for revenue officials and no system monitoring as reasons for the poor performance of the department.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 23^rd, 2015.