State Committee Issues Order to Protect Villagers’ Rights and Pocketbooks
On March 27, the new Head of Ukraine’s State Committee on Land Resources (DKZ), Mykola Sydorenko issued an order that clearly establishes that citizens should not pay fees for the registration of land titles, which helps pave the way for a successful completion of Ukraine’s land reform under the law protecting villagers from improper fee collection. The decision ostensibly ends a legal tug-of-war over whether charges can be applied to the issuance of land titles.
Ukraine’s rural land reform is driven by the need to raise village living standards through rapid and cost-free transfers of ownership of former collective farm land to the seven million former members of those now-defunct collective farms and their families. USAID is supporting the Ukraine Land Titling Initiative (ULTI) to assist Ukraine’s many local governments to manage and implement this enormous undertaking.
Since ULTI began its work on October 31, 2001, it has directly supported the issuance of up to 1.8 million land titles to eligible villagers, approximately 20 percent of the total number to be issued in Ukraine. As land titles are prepared, ULTI also supports nationwide public education and legal aid programs so villagers understand and can protect their newly won land ownership rights.
One of the main provisions in this project is the principle of free-of-charge issuance of land titles. Problems arose in January 2002 with the introduction of the new Land Code, when the DKZ assumed responsibility for registering title to land, and in 2003 transferred this duty to the State Land Cadastral Center, a subordinate, commercial organization. Effectively, this led to the establishment of a monopoly for land survey services, and a conflict implementing the land reform then erupted. While USAID was providing substantial free-of-charge financial aid to Ukraine to accelerate the land reform, a state-owned Ukrainian organization, instead of contributing to the work, attempted to derive profits by charging fees to villagers for registering their new land ownership rights.
To resolve this conflict, ULTI launched a comprehensive public education and outreach campaign targeting all strata of Ukraine’s society. Public education programs on national and oblast radio and TV, two national-level publications, and seminars for village and raion-level (district) officials informed Ukrainian officials and citizens of the impropriety of fee collection for the registration of land titles. In addition, ULTI’s counterparts in local, oblast, and national-level state institutions appealed to the DKZ to stop improper collection of fees from villagers to register their right to land.
In May 2004, the DKZ issued guidelines in which land titles prepared with ULTI support were to be registered free-of-charge. The problem appeared to be partially resolved, and ULTI set to get the law extended to all those who registered land titles. It helped to draft a law that set reasonable limits on the cost of land survey work for citizens who privatize land parcels and provide registration free-of-charge. Ukraine’s Parliament passed such a law in January 2005, but DKZ’s Cadaster Center demonstrated no desire to comply with the will of the Verkhovna Rada. It instructed subordinate agencies to continue collecting fees for the registration of land titles not funded by ULTI.
While ULTI anticipated a change for the better in DKZ’s position when its management changed in September 2005, the State Land Cadaster Centers only renewed its attempts to collect fees from all villagers registering land titles. This led ULTI to initiate a third public education campaign, both at the national and individual village levels, while reopening negotiations with DKZ, which resulted in the new decree signed by new DKZ head Sydorenko on March 27.
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Kyiv Oblast Governor Y. Zhovtiak issues State Act during titling ceremony in March 2006. More than one million Ukrainian villagers have received ownership of land plots through USAID support
Photo Credit: L. Chmyga |
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