The Coordinator of Rede Ba Rai (Network for Land) organisation Roberto Aleixo da Cruz said many people in the rural areas seem unfamiliar with the National System of Land and Property (NSLP) so the government needs to increase its efforts in raising awareness about its services.
The NSLP is one of the government’s new programs that surveys people’s lands at the grassroots level but many people are confused with the program as there used to be another program called INR ‘Ita Nian Rai’ that was very similar to the NSLP.
“The INR program surveyed people’s land before and now NSLP, run by a local company, seems to be continuing to survey the land but some people are not aware of the program therefore they are confused,” said RBR Coordinator da Cruz in Dili.
Some people’s lands have been surveyed by INR teams and have had their certificates issues but now NSLP comes and is surveying them again.
“INR surveyed the land before. Now NSLP is surveying them again. What is the difference?” da Cruz questioned.
The RBR Coordinator urged the government through the NSLP team to raise awareness in the community before conducting a survey so they are familiar with the process.
In response to the concern, the Secretary of State for Land Property Jaime Lopes explained that the government has changed programs from Ita Nian Rai to the National System of Land and Property because the first program didn’t have complete data.
“INR only surveyed the land and not a house for its size. This should have been measured as well,” said Secretary Lopes.
NSLP therefore surveys the land and the house again, either a private or public property, to find out how large they are and how much they cost so the state has more complete data.
The SE added that INR used to measure land parcels using a Google surveying system to determine how large a land parcel was but the actual size of the land did not always match the land parcel measured using Google.
“Google isn’t very useful to measure the land because sometimes the correct size of the land is five meters but the size in Google could be 10 centimetres only,” said the SE.
Under the new NSLP program the government used an aircraft to take photos and use geometric figuring to get the exact width and height of land parcels.
SE Lopes corrected also that the NSLP has measure some 70 community properties but these do not include the land parcels initially measured by the INR program.
He concurred the government needs to increase its efforts to raised awareness in the community about the National System of Land and Property.
