03 Feb 2016

Minister of Lands and Housing, Mr Prince Maele, has called on departments under his ministry to put more effort in ensuring the ministry scores better appraisal marks. Addressing the staff of Motokwe Sub-land board on Friday, Mr Maele said for the last two reviews, the ministry came short of the 70 per cent pass mark.

Therefore, he advised departments to assist each other and share resources to enable them to deliver accordingly. He informed the staff that people were complaining about poor service delivery as well as high corruption levels in land boards.
He therefore reuqested them to work hard to cleanse their image, especially on the issue of corruption.

Mr Maele also stated that working for the land board did not give them priority over the general public when it came to land allocation. He also informed them that this year, his priority would be on staff welfare, which he said could be boosted by appreciating best performing staff members monthly.

“Some gestures of appreciation do not require much.  Small tokens such as taking the employee for lunch or displaying their photo in the office for that month can be enough motivation,” he said, and advised the senior management to look into issues of people who acted for positions of responsibility for a long time.

“If you have a person acting for a position, just a few months can give you a picture of whether they should be confirmed or hifted back to their initial positon.

So the issue of people acting for about three years should not be allowed as it demoralises staff and leads to poor performance,” he said.

In his welcome remarks, Motokwe Sub-land Board chairman, Mr Maoto Khudu, raised concern over the criteria used to allocate funds and resources, which he said mostly favoured areas that had the challenge of congestion of residential plot allocations.
He said such a practice disadvantaged his land board as it had low backlog because it mostly dealt with agricultural plots.

“The fact that we allocate plots out in the bush also poses a challenge, but our concern is that areas that have  challenges of residential plots application influx are given priority over us,” he said.
Mr Khudu however, appreciated the temporary staff members who had been engaged to assist especially in the LAPCAS exercise.  Staff members pleaded with the minister to address the issue of lack of accommodation in Motokwe.

They also said the existing houses were not of good quality as some of them were converted from office  to residential. They also raised concern on the criteria used to allocate the houses, saying that the allocation was biased towards the senior staff members.

However, the principal human resource officer, Mr Matthews Buzwani informed them that the policy on housing allocation was that senior members of staff were  given priority over junior staff.
He informed them that they had noted the staff’s concern on lack of accommodation.

Member of Parliament for Takatokwane constituency, Mr Ngaka Ngaka decried the gap that existed between his office and the sub-land board, saying it was embarrassing that as the area MP, he only got to know about the challenge of lack of accommodation in the presence of the minister.

He said had the staff informed him before, the issue would have long been raised with the minister. He therefore urged for constant meetings between the two offices. Ends