Questions about prescriptive title
Dear Editor,
With respect to your news article ‘CCJ sets aside rulings over Essequibo rice lands’ (SN, August 24), Omeshwar Misir obtained transported title to seven acres of rice land in the year 1999. In 2011, Massabally petitioned the Land Court for a prescriptive title based on the alleged fact that he had occupied the land for more than 10 years. He apparently was granted that title.
Editor, is it possible for your paper to do an educational article on the procedures the court uses to grant prescriptive titles? In what year did Massabally obtain his title? Did the judge inquire into what happened to the transported title owner? Was he dead or alive? And was the title owner of record required to be present if he was alive and could be located?
Storme, an SN blogger (SN, Aug 24) cited the 1907 precedent that lays the foundation for the prescriptive title law: “And if the rightful owner does not come forward and assert his title by process of law within the period prescribed by the provisions of the Statute of Limitations applicable to the case, his right is forever extinguished, and the possessory owner acquires an absolute title”.
The statute of limitations is 10 years. Your article reported that Misir had been fighting with the Rice Assessment Committee long before the clock ran out to acquire possession of the land. Shouldn’t this fact be considered by the judge who granted prescriptive title? It seems to me that the system of granting prescriptive titles is very unreasonable and flawed.
This case is very interesting for the following reasons: (1) our laws need to be overhauled to allow for more emphasis on facts and reason, and less on technicalities. (2) How relevant is the 1907 law to Guyana’s culture and conditions in 2016? Half of the Guyanese population lives abroad. Is it realistic to expect them to read the Official Gazette which would have alerted them to someone claiming title to their property? (3) Hundreds of property titles have been changed by fraudulent power-of-attorneys, and it took years for the transported title owners to find out about it. It is time for limits to be placed on the uses of power-of-attorneys. One good rule to incorporate in our laws: If the owner is alive and well make it mandatory for him to appear to give assent to changing title to his property.
Yours faithfully, Mike Persaud