El gobierno …

The difficulties discussed above have led to a lack of trust and confidence in the accuracy of the formal land and real estate registration system. This is important because, where there is a lack of confidence, people may be more inclined to disregard the formal system and more inclined to be involved with a citizen-led or supported system using VGI. Again, the responses to questions about the formal system differed between the three different area types. Table 5.3 below highlights that fewer people responded that they did have confidence than did not have confidence in the system.

Table 5.3 Percentages of volunteers who responded to the question of whether or not they had confidence in the current LAS.

Communities Yes No Don't know

Urban 34% 44% 22%

Peri-urban 62% 24% 14%

Rural 15% 67% 18%

There was a noticeable difference of opinion in rural areas, with the majority (67%) having no confidence in the formal system for collecting data about their land parcels, recording and storing that information, or allowing access to the data for land transactions.

This problem is common with many institutions of the Iraqi government where the employees working with the general public or with businesses will not do work or will be very slow or place obstacles in the process unless money is offered. A lawyer in the al-Hillah court said that:

"the routine of work in Iraqi governmental departments is obstructed by some of the staff who put obstacles so as to force citizens to pay bribes or reliance on the Moaakib, a person whose job is to perform or complete any task related to the real estate registration office for the citizens and who earns large amounts of money and he then gives a percentage of the money earned to those employees.

Then he added that: Despite the alerts and warnings about punishment for venal and

corrupt employees in government departments, some state department staff whose jobs involve direct contact with citizens still deal by bribery or invent obstacles that frustrate the citizens. This leads them to leave and resort to the Moaakib who can do the tasks easily and quickly because he is sharing the money with employees inside the Real Estate Registration Department."

Another volunteer described his experience in one of the real estate registry offices as follows:

“When I was living in Baghdad, I went to the real estate registration office there to transfer ownership. I did not listen to my friends who told me that I should be hiring a Moaakib to avoid wasting effort and time with such government departments. However, I decided to go with the routine procedure of land transaction myself. After strenuous effort and expense, many revisions, going to and coming from, many institutions associated with the real estate register office, finally my file reached an employee responsible for calculating the municipal taxes on the property. This employee intentionally put obstacles is the way to delay the completion of the transaction. I became angry and when a verbal altercation was just about to happen, a wise man

intervened in the matter. Finally, I decided to give authorization to a Moaakib who informed me that he was going to finish the task by giving some money to the employee as a gift to complete the transaction” (Parcel, 3/334).

The director of the statistics department in the Commission of Integrity said that:

“Real estate registration offices are the governmental institutions that we receive a lot of complaints from people about, so that the Commission of Integrity paid more attention to collect survey data on it. This attention stems from our keenness to support the citizens and make them feel that we try our best to solve their problems. As a general average, the Commission of Integrity carries out monthly surveys on about 35 real estate offices. The first category in our monthly survey, using a standard Commission of Integrity form for checking most Iraqi institutions, shows the rate of general bribery. In the real estate registration sector, the usual results of the monthly survey reveal that around 20 of these offices score the highest for general bribery compared to all the other government institutions. For example, the average rate of general bribery may be 2.5% for one month, across all the institutions that the Commission of Integrity has done surveys on, including the 35 real estate registry offices. Then we usually find that half of those real estate offices get a rate of bribery higher that the general rate.”

On the other hand, some Moaakib described themselves as ‘good helpers’ (Figure 5.5 above). One of them argued that:

“Citizens are seeking to pay us money to complete their transactions or any other land problems because of their inability, it is hard for them to come from other cities or they may have more important jobs to do than standing for many hours in queues in government departments. They use Moaakibs as a way to carry the burden of their inability to complete transactions. We do not force anyone to come to us and the money that they pay us is not considered as a bribe or extortion. We take the right decision by doing the transaction in addition to enduring the humiliation of some employees of the departments of state”.

However, trust has been eroded further by cases of fraud or forgery among officials. A well- publicised event in October 2013 saw the closing of the official Al-Hillah land administration office after fourteen employees were caught forging a large number of title deeds to control government lands and land owned by people living outside Iraq.

A volunteer from the urban community said that:

“I bought a 300 square metre plot in 2011 in Karama district and left Iraq. After a few years, I came back to Iraq and decided to sell my parcel. I went to the area and found that my parcel, for which I have a formal deed in my name, had been sold three times after I bought it. In addition, I found that the empty parcel that I bought at that time is being built on already with a nearly complete house. I made a formal complaint; however, I got nothing”.

This concern was shared by land administration professionals, and a surveyor from the land administration system agreed, saying that:

“Fraud happens frequently especially when some bad employees change the owner’s documents. For example, they may change the picture of the person who owns the parcel. They also put new documents in his file and then it will be very difficult to find the real owner. All those problems happen because of the way that we store the registration data. if it was a computer-based system, this situation will not happen.”

The lack of trust in the land administration system did not only stem from fraud and impropriety. People were also concerned about a general lack of care or ability on the part of land professionals or other government bodies. For example, the land administration system gives title deed certificates for some areas that the government owns to people without checking the area in advance to ensure that there is no illegal occupier. One woman from the urban area

explained that the government allocated a piece of land for her and other people whose sons or husbands had died while fighting against ISIS. However, when the surveyor of the land administration office went with her to fix the boundary of her parcel he found that the land was already occupied illegally and a house had been built on it. She said that the surveyor asked her to complain to the court. However, despite the making the complaint, the situation was not resolved.

The researcher asked the official surveyor about the reason for such situations. The surveyor attributed it the urgent orders of the Prime Minister, or other high authorities, who want this procedure of giving land parcels to people in need or to martyrs of the army and volunteers, to be completed very rapidly. For this reason, a title deed is given to the owner without formally surveying the land to check if there is any illegal occupancy.

Another explanation came from other surveyors who attributed this situation for two reasons. Firstly, an error may be made by the municipality surveyors themselves, who supply the land administration department with data on the boundaries of the whole area that they wish to subdivide in to parcels and distribute to the people. However, they may not have up-to-date information about recent illegal occupancy. Secondly, the new owners who get a parcel from the government may leave their land for long period because there are no services, no formal roads, or it might still be an agricultural area. This gives the chance to other people to occupy the parcel illegally and build their own homes on it.