GLSC to strengthen capacity of legal division

The Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission (GLSC) announced this week that there are plans to recruit additional persons to its legal department in efforts to strengthen its capacity and meeting pressing demands.
This was announced by Commissioner of the GLSC, Trevor Benn, who also indicated that plans were in the pipeline to seek assistance from an external legal consultant. The employment of a larger workforce will elevate the department to five lawyers.
“At the moment, we have two persons on staff and we intend to hire three others and also we have started a relationship with an external legal consultant as well who will assist the team… We’re taking steps to change the structure of our legal division to make sure it can meet the demands that is being placed on it at the moment,” said Benn.
He noted that the Judicial Review Bill would have resulted in some clients seeking assistance from the judicial system to demand answers from the Commission. This has also caused some modification in their operations.
“With the passing of the Judicial Review Bill, a number of clients have chosen to utilise the courts to demand answers from Lands and Surveys about the way we’ve been making decisions and which has caused us to review the way we do business here in the Commission.”
Nevertheless, Benn insisted that collaboration and communication has been ongoing with other land agencies to ensure that consumers are being served promptly and their issues are addressed.
The Commissioner detailed, “We continue to have meetings with our colleague land agencies, the Deeds Registry, the Central Housing and Planning Authority, the Land Registry to name a few to ensure that we are able to meet the demands of our Act as coordinated for all land agencies.”
From January 8-12, 2019, Guyana will be hosting the Seventeenth Session of the Committee for the Review of the Convention (CRIC) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre.
CRIC is a subsidiary body of the Conference of Parties (CoP). This event will see between 400 to 600 people from over 100 countries and will significantly raise the profile of the country as a ‘green’ state.
Guyana has been a signatory to UNCCD and an active participant since 1997 and is the first English-speaking Caribbean country to have acceded to membership of the CRIC Bureau.