1900 cases keeping curator busy to clear

THE Public Curator needs to clear a backlog of more than 1900 properties and estates, says Jacob Popuna.
“This figure is only for properties and not money,” he said.
Popuna said a decision was made before he took office in 2013 to deal with matters starting from the year 2000 to date.
Files for the years before 1999 cannot be dealt with because there are so many of them.
“One of our priorities since last year was to deal with this backlog. We will be making a submission to the government to assist us,” he said.
Popuna said another challenge was the legal issue of the ownership of properties.
“When houses are given away to public servants though the various schemes, titles to the properties were not transferred.
“Thus when the tenant dies, the National Housing Corporation still remains the legal owner,” he said.
Popuna said there could be other documentation indicating that the property had been transferred but the title usually remained with the NHC.
“It has been the major problem in clearing the backlog because we now have to ask NHC to transfer the title so that we can facilitate the transfer to the beneficiaries on behalf of the deceased,” he said.