Buying land made easy

So you’ve have decided to buy that land which you think is a steal. Well, think again. Someone may be stealing your hard-earned money.

Consider this: The Land Registration Authority (LRA) has called on the public to be wary of syndicates specializing in fake land titles.

LRA deputy administrator Ronald Ortile warned that members of these syndicates pretend to be landowners wanting to dispose of their assets.

“There are victims of these syndicates who invested their hard-earned money on a piece of property only to find out that the land title is fake, and the seller just seemed to vanish in thin air,” Ortile said.

I endorse the advice of Administrator Ortile who said that before buying any real estate property we should make sure the documents, particularly the title, are clean. Further, you should compare the owner’s copy of the land title being offered for sale with its counterpart original on file with the Register of Deeds.

Computerizing the land titles is the solution we have been waiting for. Land titles should be converted into e-titles to maintain the security and integrity of your records. The e-titling service is part of LRA’s Land Titles Computerization Project (LTCP) meant to safeguard all information from tampering, destruction, and substitution.

Administrator Ortile, who is also a lawyer, assured us that e-titles “could not be forged, hacked, replaced, duplicated, or switched.”

Through e-titling, the original paper-based land titles stored in the Registries of Deeds (RDs) are converted to electronic data. These digitized titles are kept in a secure storage or databank developed by the LRA and its private firm partner, the Land Registration Systems, Inc. (LARES).

“If an RD office gets burned or flooded, the system developed for LTCP could recover the files in a few days,” Ortile said. The system in place has several backups, which makes the restoration of damaged data much faster.

Aside from protection against fraud and destruction, e-titles also ensure the integrity and accuracy of the information in land titles, and helps in speeding up the processing of transactions, notably loan applications with the banks.

Needless to say, the LRA has come a long way in systems and services upgrade to the 21st century technology.

This may mean that as lot owners, we can sleep the sleep of the just – no more worries about misadventures with our prized possession – our title to our piece of land.

We can also equate this LRA computerization to a definitive step in eliminating hooligans that prey on unwary lot owners and unsuspecting lot buyers.

As lot owners, let’s do our share in this very necessary move: Have our land titles converted to the paper-less e-titles.

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The UCCP-Cosmopolitan Church will be joining hands with the World Council of Churches, Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, the International Network of Religious Leaders Living with and Personally Affected by HIV and AIDS (INERELA), the Philippine Catholic HIV and AIDS Network and the Philippine National AIDS Council and other NGOs working with HIV and AIDS at a forum to heighten the need to work together to end the cyclical pattern of SSDDIM associated with the phenomena of HIV and AIDS.

The forum will be held at the Mary Boyd Stagg Memorial Sanctuary of UCCP-Cosmopolitan Church on Taft Avenue on June 3 from 1:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. It is open to the public. Registration fee is P100.

Objectives of the forum are: 1) To understand how stigma, shame, denial, discrimination, inaction and misaction (SSDDIM) drive the spread of HIV much faster than the virus itself and to learn how infected individuals and families faced their fears and drew courage to disclose their status and become actively involved in HIV and AIDS programs through education, lobby and advocacy work; 2) To provide a safe space for exchanging views and experience among faith-based organizations; 3) To identify advocates who can commit to lead efforts in addressing SDDIM, and 4) To celebrate common advocacies to end HIV and AIDS.

Local and international speakers will talk about their personal experience on SSDDIM. International speakers are supported by the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiative in Africa.

Angela Valdez Timtiman, a member of Cosmopolitan Church and an outspoken advocate of measures to make assessment and treatment of HIV and AIDS more accessible, will present her personal story on the need for families to create safe spaces for people living with HIV and AIDS.

The international guests who are coming on June 1-7 are active in eliminating SSDDIM as well as in rolling out the SAVE Methodology (Safer practices, Access to treatment and nutrition, Voluntary & Stigma free HIV Counseling & Testing and Empowerment of children, youth, men, women, families, communities and Nations to defeat HIV & AIDS). They are guests of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines through their member churches, the UCCP-Cosmopolitan Church, Iglesia Filipina Independiente, and Episcopal Church of the Philippines.

Rev. Canon Dr. Gideon Byamugisha has received numerous national and International Awards for his work on HIV and AIDS. He is the 2009 Laureate for the highly regarded Niwano Peace Award and Prize (Japan). Other awards are from The Parliament of Uganda, World Vision, International, Stromme Foundation Norway, Uganda AIDS Commission, Friends of the Global Fund, and Nkumba University.

Rev. Phumzile Mabizela is the executive director of INERELA, an international, interfaith network of religious leaders – both lay and ordained, women and men – who are living with or are personally affected by HIV. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church of Africa.

Elijah Fung is a trustee of the Anglican of Canterbury’s Anglican Communion Fund; and Board Member of CARAM Asia (Coordination of Action Research on AIDS and Mobility Asia). She has written a number of papers, among them “Working Conditions, Relationship with Employers and Health Related Quality of Life of Domestic Workers in Hong Kong,” “Research on Malaysian and Hong Kong Employers’ Perception and Attitudes on Foreign Domestic Workers,” “The Qualitative Study on Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services and Information of Women Migrant Domestic Workers with Action for Health Initiative (ACHIEVE) in the Philippines, and a “Survey on Women & AIDS” to document AIDS knowledge, attitudes, opinions about condom use and practice with one’s spouse or sexual partner.

The three international guests will be hosted by NCCP from June 4 to 7, 8:30-12 noon to roll out the SAVE Methodology at the National Cathedral of St. Mary & St. John, Episcopal Church of the Philippines in Quezon City, adjacent to St. Luke’s Hospital. They will proceed to Aglipay Central Theological Seminary in Urdaneta, Pangasinan where they will address the faculty and students on June 5 in the morning.

On June 6 there will be a press conference at Cosmopolitan Church on Taft Avenue.

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