02 Apr 2014

The process of updating information and verification of records for land ownership faces challenges in the Chobe District as few people turn up for the exercise, says the acting Chobe Land Board secretary, Mr Stanley Mokotedi.

Addressing members of the press in Francistown recently, the acting board secretary said the Land Administration Procedure and Capacity Systems (LAPCAS) sought to register all plots, be it residential, commercial, industrial, civic and community as well as arable land across all the 12 land boards in the country.

Mr Mokotedi said although the process aimed at updating information, records keeping and issuance of new certificates with new improved security features, plot owners were reluctant to come forward for the process.

Some property owners especially those who owned more than one plot in the district, did not come forward due to fear of losing their land rights.  Mr Mokotedi said the process  was moving at a slow pace, adding that some plot owners who reside outside the Chobe District are difficult to trace particularly for plots which were allocated by tribal authorities and do not have traceable records in their systems.

In addition, he highlighted that they were also faced with poor lease payments and currently the land board was owed P2 million. Through an intensified physical collection in this financial year, he noted that they had managed to collect only P600 000.

Prior to the physical collection strategy, they sent out statements and notices but no good results were produced. Challenges encountered, he said were that some of the plots have be transferred from one person to another without any notification sent to them.

Some of the defaulters residing outside the district make excuses citing long distances and travel costs for failure to make payments on their leases. However, he said that they have since made arrangements with other stakeholders to have payments made at their offices as a way of improving collection.

For his part, the board chairperson, Mr Nelson Masule said unlike in other land boards, their land board does not have waiting lists for people waiting to be allocated plots because already land for human settlement was scarce and the Chobe National Park occupies 74 per cent of the land in the district.

Mr Masule said they faced problems when trying to acquire more land for commercial, residential and even industrial purposes.

However, Mr Masule said they were still consulting key stakeholders among them department of forestry and Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism to be given some of the forestry reserves to demarcate it for human settlement. Ends