Last week, Croatian media dedicated significant space to the report from the Ministry of Justice and Administration regarding the alleged chaos in land registries that occurred in the second quarter of this year. It cites a number of specific data: for example, the worst land registry is in Pag, which takes 162 days to resolve a single case; followed by Gračac with 148 days, Supetar with 104 days, Vinkovci with 99 days, etc. Somewhat shyly, at the end, it is noted that the average time for resolving land registry cases in the second quarter of this year was 23 days.
I made an effort and tried to conduct a small survey, which revealed that in Gračac, if there are, for example, three land registry clerks working there, approximately six land registry cases are resolved in a year (if there are two clerks, then four, etc.). This further means that one clerk spends (considering an eight-hour workday) more than a thousand hours on one land registry case!
By the way, this is done for a paid fee of 250 kuna (or half of that amount if the proposal is digital). A truly poorly paid clerk (an unauthorized one cannot achieve a monthly net salary of 4500 kuna, while an authorized one can earn 5500 kuna) meanwhile receives a gross salary of at least 40,000 kuna for five months.
People and Cases Are Not the Same
When additional data is requested on the websites, it is seen that in Gračac, three people deal with land registry cases: one judge, one land registry manager, and one authorized clerk. However, the judge also deals with lawsuits in Gospić, so she is not in the land registry all the time.
However, is it true that some clerk sits over one case for eight hours a day (for so many days) until it is resolved and simultaneously does nothing else? It is true that the same clerk during that time also receives and resolves other cases, if they exist and if they are suitable for resolution. And perhaps most importantly: many cases are not suitable for resolution because it is necessary to resolve cases for which there is an older (and is resolved according to age and absolute priority, even if the documents are identical, there is an earlier proposal for registration) so-called seal (sign of existence) beforehand.
Among these bottlenecks, there are many objections that have been filed at the same land registry court, which were submitted five or six years ago. It would be worth investigating why this is the case (but within the system, not through the media). It would also be worth checking the reason for the lack of clear differentiation of the workload of the land registry clerk who receives, for example, the execution of a donation contract for duly registered real estate (which takes about sixty minutes of work) and the registration – execution of the elaboration for the division of a residential building, which can be a job that is not completed even in three working days. It would be worth checking why it is not ensured (if it is not, as it seems given all of the above) that if the person who needs to resolve the objection is prevented, and there is no one else at the same court (which will be the case in smaller courts), that someone at another court resolves it, that every excess of received cases (especially simple ones) above the prescribed six as the daily norm for clerks is immediately digitally forwarded to where it will be resolved the same day.
