Govt will start distributing land ownership certificates by first week of July: Rawal

KATHMANDU: Minister for Land Management, Cooperatives, Federal Affairs and General Administration, Pratibha Rawal, has said that the government will begin distributing land ownership certificates to landless squatters from the first week of July.

Responding to questions raised by lawmakers about her ministry’s budget during a meeting of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Rawal said the government was working under a new action plan to resolve the long-standing issue of landless settlers.

“Although 1.2 million applications have been received from landless people over the past three decades, only 9,000 have so far received land ownership certificates. This is a shameful situation,” she said.

Rawal added that the government has introduced structural reforms to address the problem. Under the new arrangement, committees chaired by chief district officers (CDOs) will handle the management of landless people at the district level, she said. “A panel of experts will operate at the central level,” Rawal added.

Responding to a query about the cooperative sector, Rawal clarified that not a single rupee from the state treasury has been used to refund depositors of troubled cooperatives. “Over the past three months, a total of Rs 5.9 million has been returned to 1,452 small depositors of eight crisis-hit cooperatives,” she said.

According to Rawal, the funds were recovered by freezing the assets and bank accounts of the cooperative promoters and officials.

During the same period, government officials also recovered Rs 35.449 million in outstanding loans from different cooperatives.