My name is Mohammad Ismail, I am Social Organizer in Kabul under the City for All Programme and my job consists of visiting the district for awareness-raising before conducting the survey.

In one of such visits, there was a man named Mohammad Anwar who lives in Block 5^th, district one, he was the first person I’ve met and the first one I explained the survey process too. He was surprised at the beginning, and surprised me when he refused the survey by saying “I will not allow this survey to be conducted because you are deteriorating our block.”

I met him three times in those field visits and gave him the survey description. Unfortunately, I didn’t succeed and wasn’t able to convince him. Later on, I met the chief of the Afghan Land Authority (ARAZI) who advised me to gather 100 people from the Nahia one to concisely but comprehensively explain the purpose of the survey. To explain why the survey was important, its values and expected outcomes.

Anwar, along with other people, was invited to the meeting. I explained that the program had been initiated by the Afghan Government and how their houses were going to be officially registered through a survey, for which they would all receive a printed property occupancy certificate and no house, would be destroyed. Anwar and other people heard our message during the meeting, however, it wasn’t really satisfied with it and wouldn’t convince of our intentions. In spite of this, the survey was eventually conducted.

Days later, during a historic ceremony held at the Presidential Palace on 1^st of October, H.E President Ashraf Ghani handed over the first 10 occupancy certificates of District 1 in Kabul Municipality.  Anwar was one of those lucky ones who received the occupancy certificate directly from the hands of the President.

To our surprise, his idea of the whole process quickly changed.  He started to support surveyors and raising people’s awareness to allow the surveyors and help them to the process, which helped to smoothly run the process in order to let others receive their property certificate by the Government.