Past and present difficulties in cadastral surveys and land registration

Land is the raw material of nearly all wealth, but neither the development nor the administration of any plot of land can be planned economically or carried out efficiently without complete and accurate knowledge of its size, its boundaries, its neighbors, its owners and the natural and artificial features within its borders. It follows that surveying and registration become operations of fundamental importance and a necessary preliminary to economic development of any and every scheme; schemes which meet the prime necessity of developing the Country's natural resources as rapidly as possible and which eventually ensure that the country can support the highest standard of living for all those elements which make up its population, such schemes which revive the dying areas and thus bring new life and prospects to people who live within their influence. Without some action of this kind, vast areas of our country would have remained a wilderness incapable of supporting even a minimum standard of living.