17 Dec 2015

Sefhare Sub-land board is in the process of rolling out land registration to more villages.

Briefing dikgosi, councillors and Village Development Committee (VDC) members in Sefhare recently, the sub-land board, secretary, Mr Kudzani Butale, said the project started in Moshopha and will be rolled out to other 17 villages under the sub-land board jurisdiction.

In Moshopha, of the 664 plots visited, 500 were surveyed while 172 plots were unclaimed.

He said the land board was expected to have completed the project in all villages by March 2016, adding that two teams led by two land surveyors will be engaged to fast track the project.

He informed the village leadership that the land board would therefore cease plot allocations in order to give the project maximum attention. 

Mr Butale further said after completion of the project, the land board and other land authorities would be able to know who owns what, where and for what use.

He said land boards were challenged with overwhelming plot applications, adding that LAPCAS will bring about a comprehensive database to enable information exchange and dissemination for all land boards.

He said therefore the system that will be put in place will enable the land boards to identify people who had already been allocated plots thus will allocate plots to people who have no plots at all.

The exercise will involve surveying plots and allocate them unique identity numbers, therefore on completion plot owners will be issued with new plot certificates bearing new identity numbers and some security features.

Mr Butale further said the exercise is of great advantage to those who wanted to apply for title deeds, saying that since the plots are already surveyed, applicants will not have to survey their plots again when applying for title deeds.

He also said information such as plot certificates, letters and other correspondences have been put haphazardly making it difficult to access information; thus LAPCAS will entail sorting out landboard records. He said the landboard engaged records managers to assist in this regard.

LAPCAS is a partnership project between Sweden and Ministry of Lands and Housing aimed at improvement and excellence in land management.

For his part, the sub-landboard chairperson, Mr Don Wesson requested for cooperation between the landboard and the village leadership.

He asked the village leadership to disseminate the information to their respective communities, adding that for the project to be successful the landboard and the community should cooperate well.

“The project cannot be successful without your involvement hence the reason why we invited you to this meeting,” he said.

For their part, the village leadership welcomed the project, saying that it will bring developments to their villages. Ends