Prime Minister Dr. Ahmed Nazif inaugurated today via a video conference a series of centers linked to phase I of the National Project for Automation of Agricultural Land Registration in Egypt at the Egyptian Survey Authority (ESA) and the Land Registry offices in Giza and the newly developed Corporeal Land Registry Office in Kafr El-Sheikh province.
Minister of Communications and Information Technology Dr. Tarek Kamel, Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Dr. Mahmoud Abu Zaid, Minister of Justice Counselor Mamdouh Marie, a number of other ministers, Giza governor and senior justice and CIT officials witnessed the electronic inauguration.
The project, which came about within the MCIT's Egyptian Information Society Initiative, started with a preliminary 200 million-pound cost.
The three-year project is expected to register 8.2 million acres of lands nationwide. It enables more efficient settling of ownership disputes and protects both the State and citizens' rights.
The project also sets the one-stop shop principle at public authorities. A representative of the survey office and another from the authentication office will be available at the corporeal registry offices to offer the service, whereas these offices will be connected electronically with the national identification databases and in the future with those of the real estate taxation authority.
About 1500 new graduates from different authorities work on the project, after they had received high-quality IT training conforming to its requirements.
The remaining phase of the project includes a Cadastral Mapping Center to be founded at the Egyptian ESA as well as developing and mechanizing the operations of the cadastral offices of the authority and implementing an information network linking the authority's offices to the center.
The first phase of the project comprised maps digitalization and a database for maps and another for real estate documents, then the integration of both into a database for geographical information.
It also included the establishment of an information center for corporeal registry at the Ministry of Justice, developing the corporeal registry offices operations and implementing an information network connecting these offices with the Cadastral Mapping Center of the Egyptian General Survey Authority.
In April 2005 a three-year trilateral cooperation protocol was signed among Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI) and Ministry of Justice. Since then the project has been carried out between the three ministries, on one hand, and 11 private sector companies on the other, representing an example of an effective public-private partnership.
