The Ministry of Justice will work towards the digitalisation of records kept by the Registrar of Land, Titles and Deeds Office after an allocation was made in the 2023-2024 National Budget for this purpose.
While delivering the 2023-2023 National Budget announcement in Parliament last week, Minister of Finance Professor Biman Prasad said a total of $7.6 million was allocated to the Ministry of Justice.
Responding to the announcement, Attorney-General Siromi Turaga said the whole mission of the Coalition Government was to ease communication and business.
“This is so that people don’t waste time and money and resources unnecessarily,” Mr Turaga said.
“Unfortunately, this is the third project of digitalisation. The two previous projects flopped, and money was just wasted.
“I understand the first one was done. The scanning was OK then when it comes to print, it was not reading what was in the titles. So, it was a total waste.
“The next one was just to do study and I understand that they paid about $US1 million or $F2.5m, which is a total waste of money, just to study what to be done. Then, I think COVID came and that was it.”
Mr Turaga said the digitalisation initiative would quicken the processes for people who wanted to make use of the resources provided by the Registrar of Titles.
“So, we are starting the digitalisation program and right now, we are behind.
“At the end of business, they (people) want the registration of titles process to be quicker. So currently we are in that process and once we finish that, hopefully before the end of the year, that should improve.
“That should go in line with the objective of the Government, which is the ease of business.”
Mr Turaga said it was looking to be a very productive year for the ministry, even though a lot of work needed to be done.
