Latest update January 18th, 2025 5:20 AM
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Gem Sanford-Johnson is new Bar Association President
– has plans to raise awareness about prescriptive rights
A number of Guyanese in the Diaspora who returned to participate in the Golden Jubilee celebration
Newly elected President of the Bar Association, Mrs. Gem Sanford-Johnson.
also took the time to check on properties they had left behind many years ago. Some were, however, surprised to find that they are no longer the owners of these properties although they claimed they were sending money regularly to pay the requisite rates and taxes.
Several of these cases have gained the attention of new President of the Bar Association, Mrs. Gem Sanford-Johnson.
Sanford-Johnson was elected during the Bar Association’s Annual General Meeting on Friday May 27, 2016. She will serve for a period of one year.
And according to her yesterday, she intends to put on the front burner the issue of prescriptive rights. She said that persons are able to assume ownership by attaining prescriptive rights.
Prescriptive Rights, essentially, is the process whereby an individual applies for land they have been occupying that belongs to someone else because they have a desire to own it.
And Sanford-Johnson related that this is not a very widely known fact. She, moreover, noted that “public education is very, very important because a lot of people came home for the 50th Anniversary (Guyana Independence celebration) and found they are no longer owner of properties.”
According to her, “One family left over 30 years ago and came home looking for two pieces of land on the East of Demerara and it is no longer their property.”
“They were sitting wherever they were – Canada or the States or whichever part of the world, feeling that they still owned properties. One of the things they have been saying is ‘I have been sending money to pay the rates and taxes all these years’…,”
But according to Sanford-Johnson what they don’t know is that paying the rates and taxes would not disqualify someone from finding a way to gain prescriptive rights.
“That is one of the main issues I would like to touch on during my presidency…apparently a lot of people are not well educated about prescriptive rights and families sit down and are very comfortable that they have family members who are occupying and hopefully looking after the property but some family members are looking after the property in their own interest,” Sanford-Johnson related.
The newly appointed Bar Association President said that she plans on sharing her plans to amplify the prevailing issue with the media so as to ensure that persons are well aware.
Sanford-Johnson, who had previously served as Vice President for a period of five years during the presidency of Joseph Harmon, Kashir Khan and Teni Housty, is the third female to be elected as President in the history of the Bar Association. The former female Presidents were Pearlene Roach and Avril Anande Trotman.
According to Sanford-Johnson, she has been working in the legal system for the past 42 years. “I started off as a lawyer’s clerk and then opened my own realty state business – Sanford and Son— and that was how I earned the money to go and educate myself as a lawyer,” related Sanford-Johnson.
The newly elected President who was admitted to the Bar in 2001 has also served as President of the Women’s Lawyers Association.
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