02 Oct 2015

Senior employees in the Ministry of Lands and Housing have been advised to familiarise themselves with the Land Policy.

The advice came from the Minister of Lands and Hosing, Mr Prince Maele,  during the Leadership Special Forum in Mahalapye recently.

He said he expected all departments and land board policies to be aligned to this national policy to avoid contradictions, adding that where applicable, they should revise and review their policies to ensure they address the intention of the national policy.

Mr Maele encouraged all to familiarise themselves with the policy.

He said the policy aimed at protecting and promoting land rights of all land holders and promoting sustainable human settlements.

He noted that it stated that a person might be allocated one plot at his or her area of choice within the country, adding that he believed that this would help them reduce numbers on their waiting lists.

On other issues, the minister said the ministry wanted to attain service excellence so that they would be able to serve their customers diligently and satisfactorily.

He said they should continue to strive for improvements in the way that they served Batswana as they expected nothing less than excellent service from them.

Mr Maele said during the forum, he expected them to evaluate their progress since their previous leadership forum as well as map a way forward.

He noted that during their previous forum, he emphasised more on quality service delivery that was of paramount importance as customers needed world class service delivery.

He said he was happy to inform them that land boards had started scheduling monthly meetings and board minutes were also available before commencement of any meeting.

Furthermore, Mr Maele said a number of land boards had commenced the creation of waiting lists and the cleaning up of existing one.

He said this was commendable as they would be able to gauge the demand of land as well as to make their land allocation system transparent and credible.

He said they had also started implementing the resolution that they agreed on during the customer service excellence seminar, by operating during lunch hour, thereby affording their customers a chance to get service from 0730hrs until 1630hrs without breaking.

 

Mr Maele said all these initiatives will take their ministry to greater heights, adding that when he addressed kgotla meetings and district councils people were happy about these developments and improvements. Ends