UNMIK/FR/018/01
FEATURE RELEASE - 2 March, 2001

Land and Property Management
The Kosovo Cadastral Agency: Modernized, Computerized and Ready to Serve the Public

A typical day at the Gjilan Municipal Cadastral Office (MCO) is a busy one - a trail of visitors arrive from the morning requesting information about their properties. With the MCO's computerized data base visitors can obtain a print-out of a possession list and plan showing the location of a property in minutes: this provides them with such vital information as the number of land parcels they own, its surface area, the delimitation of the boundaries with their neighbours.  The Gjilane MCO was a great help to Mustafa Berisha.  At 73 his anxieties are focused on bequeathing his property to his sons. Uncertain about the property's size he visited the office to find out how many parcels he owns.

The computer assistant entered his name in the data-base: two possession lists immediately appeared, one from Gjilane, one from his native village, Lashtica. Then he obtained a copy of the plan showing the exact location of the property. Berisha quickly located his house and land parcels on each map. "Now I know what to divide up between my two sons."  After he apportions his property, Berisha will return here to enter the data on the new surface areas.

Thanks to a $10 million funding from Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, a modern cadastre, up to the European standards, is being established - the Kosovo Cadastral Agency. Until now all cadastral services were rendered with old technology. Aslan Rexhepi owns a cloth shop in Gjilane and lives on the two upper floors. He came to obtain a plan of the building, as he wants to renovate all the premises. He says: "Now with this new computerized system it takes a few minutes to obtain cadastral information gratis. Before the war one had to pay all kinds of taxes and it took several visits here to obtain a possession list."

Currently anyone can obtain possession lists: some interviewees complained that before the war, when Serbs were in charge, ready access to cadastral information for Albanians could be problematic.  According to a Gjilane MCO official: "Today anyone wanting to buy or sell any parcels can register these changes. Some people have problems with their neighbours over boundaries. The job of our surveyor is to go into the field and measure the parcels. With the data about the land area they can create a demarcation." This was the concern of two Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) soldiers from the Gjilane KPC HQ office who were next in line.  They needed to know the exact boundaries around the KPC HQ because of planned expansion work: "We don't want to expand beyond the boundary's limits," says Agim Limani, from the KPC Department of Operations.

The public's ready access to efficient cadastral services is thanks to a three-year Support Programme to establish the Kosovo Cadastral Agency, a project funded by Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and UNMIK. The main problem encountered in building a modern European system was that most of the cadastre was based on old information: the last aerial survey for rural areas was done in 1970s, for urban areas from 1983 to 1989. Thus, recent high-quality ground information was missing. Moreover, because about 70 per cent of the records, including maps and lists dating to 1990-1999, were removed to Serbia during the war, the KCA has incomplete documentation reflecting the current situation. "When the time is right we will need to negotiate with Serbia to get the documents returned," says KCA Director, Bengt Anderson.

The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), which oversees the Support Programme, began to document the extent of the damage and loss of cadastral information in October 1999. According to Anderson: "The problem of lacunae is real, although the extent of document destruction/removal differs between municipalities." The KCA prepared a catalogue detailing the status of cadastral documents throughout Kosovo, which found the state of municipal cadastres to vary as follows: a. Municipalities with complete documentation, as in Pejė/Pec, Klinė/Klina, Istog/Istok and Kacanik; b. Municipalities (over 50 per cent) with partially lost records, mainly those dating from 1989 when Belgrade centralized the land cadastre; and c. Municipalities with nearly all missing cadastral documents, as in Lipjan/Lipljan, Gllogovc/Glogovac and Shtime/Stimlje.

However, according to the Gjilan Cadastre MCO director, Murat Hoxha: "The KCA did retrieve the pre-1988 material from the Pristina data-base centre comprising old magnetic tapes." These were transferred to CDs as part of the Programme, and will soon be available digitally. In addition, by April all 10,000 plans of the KCA from all the municipalities will have been scanned, and will be digitalized, so the KCA will have a digital cadastral data for every land parcel.   

Various parts of the Support Programme received different funding. Swedish aid supported the re-establishment of a cadastre system and an improved operation of the municipal cadastral offices. Simultaneously, the Swiss Government supported the preparation of aerial photography. UNMIK allocated resources from the Kosovo Consolidated Budget to develop the cadastral system.

The aerial survey campaign was begun last summer when 40 per cent of Kosovo was covered. Next summer aerial photography over the rest of Kosovo will be done. Aerial photos have important uses, for example, in the preparation of land-use maps in areas of agricultural land, to measure new buildings, or to make environmental inventories.
Apart from helping restore housing and property rights, the KCA is also helping to improve urban planning and infrastructure development.  British KFOR's Peter Miller, Defence Estates Advisor, recently visited the KCA, Pristina, to obtain cadastral maps for a road community project linking three Serbian villages. "These maps will help us identify ownership of land, private and municipal, so we can obtain the necessary clearance," says Miller.

The KCA was also a great help to IC Consulenten, a German-Austrian joint venture, which is renovating the water supply and sewage system for Pristina and 9 other municipalities - Gllogovc/Glogovac, Lipjan/Lipljan, Obiliq/Obilic, Podujevė/Podujevo, Skenderaj/Srbica, Vushtrri/Vucitrn, Mitrovicė/Mitrovica and Leposaviq/Leposavic - a network serving about 550,000 residents. To make an assessment of the whole system I.C. Consulenten is doing a hydraulic modeling for different water schemes for the 10 municipalities to pinpoint what needs rehabilitating and to be able to distribute drinking water in sufficient quantity and quality to people.

According to Johann Pichler-Stainern, a member of the project management team: "Lack of operational maintenance and spare parts over the past decade has led to leakage (the project study estimates "excessive leakage rates to be 50 per cent on average") and downgrading of existing equipment. So from a technical point of view, we need to know how the system is working.  We are using the cadastre to see how the pipes are laid. Without it we wouldn't know exactly where the pipes are, as drawings we obtained from the Water Boards - some of its plans were lost, burned or taken away during the war -- were not always correct. So we have to cross-check all data with the new data at the cadastral services."
 
IC Consulenten also needed cadastral information to obtain fixed points to make a topographic survey of the pipes, their location and elevation, and the sites of reservoirs and their water levels. Pichler-Stainern asserts: "For example, whether a reservoir's water level was as high as planned before its construction. That's very important for hydraulic modelling. Certainly the low water level in Batllava Lake would affect our planning." 

The result of the modelling, expected to be ready in a month, will give a definition of priorities as to where IC Consulenten should invest the Euro 15 million, European Agency for Reconstruction monies, to have the best cost-efficiency relationship. "As a result of this modeling we would know whether or not to increase the volume for drinking water." Construction is expected to begin towards late spring, and could involve increasing capacity in one municipality, or carrying out leakage repairs in the network.
 
Other major tasks of the KCA are: (1) To support the Housing and Property Directorate and the court system by providing them a copy of the digital cadastre for verification of litigants' claims.  According to Daniel Lewis, Chief Technical Adviser, Habitat Kosovo: "In terms of Habitat programmes supported in Kosovo, the KCA is an integral link in re-establishing a rational, functioning real estate and development planning system in Kosovo. The Housing and Property Directorate and Claims Commission, which will resolve residential property disputes arising since 1989, will be both a contributor to the Cadastre, in terms of providing updated information resulting from claims resolution, and a user of information held in the property registers during the claims resolution process."  (2) The Agency will also help create an administrative infrastructure for the proper functioning of a property market and make it possible to use property as collateral for loans and investments; and (3) Support an efficient property taxation based on market values.

A pivotal aspect of the Programme is training of cadastral officers to enable municipal cadastral offices to provide proper land and property services to the public. The Programme seeks to make the KCA independent after three years with local authorities responsible for the agency.

Note for Editors
For a selection of photographs, please contact Mr. Ky Chung at 038 504-604 ext. 5467

Contact: A. George
(038) 504 604 Ext. 5864
E-mail: george@un.org