04 Jan 2017

The chairperson of Ngwaketse Land Board, Mr Mosimanegape Mophuting has raised a concern at the rate at which Batswana are self allocating and selling land.

Mr Mophuting said if the problem is not attended to, it could have dire consequence in future. He warned against such behavior, saying it contravenes government’s settlement policy.

He said providing services to people in farming areas or illegal occupants of certain areas would mean legitimising their stay.

Mr Mophuting said in Kanye during Ngwaketse Land Board chairman’s ball recently that as landboard, they were overwhelmed by cases of squatting, the situation he said was not peculiar to Mmamokhasi area. He said similar cases have been registered and recommendations already passed to the main land board to finalise the matter before eviction orders could be secured.

He therefore called on board members and community leaders to sensitise people about the dangers of selling land and also warned them not to be seen to be encouraging squatting.

Mr Mophuting commended the Southern District teams for the spirit of selflessness they embodied during the allocation of land.

However, the chairperson appealed to Bangwaketse to always seek assistance from their office about land use and distribution rather than asking wrong people in the street.

He also appealed to dikgosi to solve minor land disputes before going to land board.

Ngwaketse land Board secretary, Mr Molebedi Khuduego said Land Administration, Processes, Capacity and Systems (LAPCAS) project faced challenges such as failure by plpt owners to identify their plots.

Mr Khuduego stated that the objective of LAPCAS was to map all plots across the country, register all land rights, resolve current land problems, assign each plot a unique plot number and to make unclaimed land available for allocation.

The project, he said would be dealing with informal landholding like squatting and consequent land conflicts.  He said land boards would have information on land ownership in the country. ENDS