His Royal Highness the Gyaltshab, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, launched three online portal services of the National Land Commission Secretariat (NLCS) yesterday.
One is the eSakor portal for rural land transaction. The commission launched the portal for urban areas two years ago.
“Our services will not only focus in the urban areas. We are here to provide services nationwide. So, we thought we also need to cater to the rural areas,” the Secretary of NLCS, Pema Chewang, said.
“The advantage of eSakor is, firstly, it will curb corruption since there is no people to people contact. Secondly, it will also enhance services. Thirdly, there will be no loss of documents.”
To execute and provide the online services to the public, the commission has trained 42 graduates.
“They will charge certain fees to the land owners. We didn’t fix any price or fees. Since they are running on a business model, we left it to the market forces,” Secretary Pema Chewang said.
The Secretary added this system will help address concerns related to informal land brokers.
“The graduates we trained are the certified land conveyances and they are the only ones who are authorized to do online transactions on a payment basis.”
The other online services launched are the Bhutan Online Land Tax Payment System and MyNLCS.
Using the Bhutan Online Land Tax Payment System, the landowners can now pay land taxes online from their places of residence.
It is expected to help improve land tax collection, and administration and management of the overall land tax system in the country.
The MyNLCS online service is aimed at providing faster communication, proper documentation and efficient public service delivery for the commission and its employees.
Guidelines and rules and regulations on land use were also launched. These guidelines and regulations will help in creating an enabling and stronger legal frameworks and policies on land use in the country.
