11 Jun 2015

The Minister of Lands and Housing, Mr Prince Maele, has appealed to land boards to clean up their waiting lists and regularly publicise them.

Addressing Malete Land Board members and staff recently, Mr Maele said publicising the waiting list would ensure transparency in land allocations and also help to curb manipulation.

He argued that publicising waiting lists would also make the public free to monitor them. He added that it would also help curb stampedes and vandalism that took place in various land board offices around the country. 

In his welcome remarks, Malete Land Board chairperson, Mr Roy Letsatsi said their office had in in the past kept a waiting list, but that it was abolished in 2012.  Mr Letsatsi explained that the cancellation of the waiting list was led by a number of reasons, which include the waiting list not being properly maintained by the office. 

Other reasons, he said included different versions of the waiting list. He added that it was also found that some applicants maintained different numbers in different versions of the waiting list.  At the time of the cancellation of the waiting list, he said there were about 1 800 applications on it.

“The office could not explain why there was such a situation. This brought suspicions that members of staff may have manipulated the waiting list for their own gain. And the waiting list was not properly implemented by the previous board because it did not consider waiting list applications in the order applications were received. Some applicants’ names in the list were skipped during hearing and they were never attended to,” he explained. 

Furthermore, he noted that in some cases, some applicants’ applications were considered earlier than applicants who applied before them.  Mr Letsatsi said since the current board and management had no concrete information as to why the situation was the way it was, they decided to do away with the waiting list. 

“The board felt that keeping a waiting list was tantamount to promising applicants land which the board knew was not available. Instead of keeping a waiting list, the board decided to advertise plots as and when they become available,” he said.

He further explained that in the 5^th leadership forum, the former Minister of Lands and Housing, Mr Lebonaamang Mokalake instructed all land boards to keep a waiting list and have it publicised on quarterly basis for the public to inspect it.  To heed the call, he said the board started working on the modalities of starting the waiting list. 

However, he said whilst the board was preparing to start the waiting list, the ministry formed a task team composed of officers from the Department of Town and Regional Planning, Department of Technical Services, land boards, Department of Lands and deputy permanent secretaries. 

The team, he said, was to develop strategies on how land around Gaborone should be planned and managed.  He added that it was due to the ongoing task that the board was advised not to start the waiting list until after completion of the assignment. 

The major challenge, he said, was that applicants who were in the abolished waiting list of 2012 were still complaining because they wanted the board to continue with the waiting list.

However, he said the board had decided not to use that waiting list since it had many problems. ENDS