Residents of Three Pagodas Pass (TPP) Town, Karen State, are issuing complaints to the Township’s Land Records Department and the TPP Township Peace and Development Council (TPDC). Last week the two authorities announced the upcoming implementation of fines for residents whose grant-land extends over the legal length or width.
Last week, on October 17, the Township’s Land Records Department, which serves the Burmese government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, commenced measuring TPP town residents’ land, and issued fines if land plots extended over 40 feet in width and 60 feet in length. The land –owners were told that they would have to pay 1000 baht to each entity (the Land Records Department and the TPDC) for each foot that their lands overreached.
According to a Mon TPP resident from No- 3 quarter, who informed IMNA that he is now the recipient of a 14,000 baht fine, “My house’s plot is currently 40 by 60 feet, it has been since I bought it. But according to the Land Records Department’s measurements, it is 47 by 60 feet.”
This No-3 quarter resident informed IMNA that if the if the Land Records Department follows the previously laid out measurements and measuring standards, land owners are legally within the official land measurements. Residents believe that the Land Records Department is utilizing a false measurement system to add to the number of feet measured in each plot, to force expensive fines on landowners.
According to IMNA’s sources, TPP residents are irate about the new fines they are being forced to pay to the Land Records Department and the TPDC; many TPP residents reportedly believe that the chairman of the TPDC has only issued the new fines as a means to earn funds before accepting a new chairman position in a different township in Burma.
According to the TPP residents that IMNA’s reporter interviewed, a land Records department worker who measured the residents’ lands informed the individuals who complained to him that the measurements had been ordered by the TPDC chairman.
Most of land plots in TPP are 105 Form, which means that technically, the lands are “temporarily owned” and have not yet been officially granted to their owners. Legal problems connected to 105 Form land-owners results in grantees being denied future official ownership of their lands; this has been standard policy an announcement from the Land Records Department 2006.
According to the TPP residents IMNA interviewed, about half of the land plots dwellers in TPP have applied to gain the legal 30-year ownership grant, known as the La Na No-3, years since 2006. House owners have to pay 800 baht to the Land Records Department to apply for a La Na No-39.
The Mon resident IMNA interviewed in TPP claimed that nobody who has applied during the last two years has received a La Na No-39 yet; instead, they simply posses documents that state that they have “already applied for a La Na No-39”.
According to the Mon TPP resident that IMNA interviewed, the TPP Land Records Department officers already measured the township’s land plots in 1992 and 1993, using the main road as a the starting point. The recent measurements performed by the Land Records Department start at the town’s outskirts, where land plots are far less formulaic than those at the center of town.
IMNA’s field reporter learned that as of this week, the Land Records Department in TPP has measured two roads’ [or city blocks] worth of land plots in No-3 quarter, but that land-grant measurements have stopped amidst the vocal dissatisfaction of TPP residents; it is uncertain at this point as to whether the project will resume.
