29 Nov 2018

Assistant Minister of Land Management, Water and Sanitation Services, Mr Kefentse Mzwinila says there are 15 558 pending applications for land allocation at Tutume Sub Land Board, with 13 880 of them having been pending for more than 24 months.

He said his ministry was not considering suspending the provision in the land policy which requires that all plots be surveyed before allocation because land surveying facilitated land registration and issuance of registerable land title. He said land surveying was not the only cause of backlog. 

To address the issue of backlog, he stated that his ministry came up with several initiatives which included among others; outsourcing of surveying, preparation of detailed layouts and land servicing, collaboration with other stakeholders such as the district council to expedite the preparation of layouts, commencement of the revised Tribal Land Act which would compensate tribal land market value and development of the PPP strategy in land servicing.

MP for Nkange, Mr Edwin Batshu had asked the minister to state the number of pending applications for land allocation at Tutume Sub Land Board, and explain how many such applications had been pending for more than 24 months.

He also enquired about the position of the ministry concerning the backlog and whether it would consider suspending in some areas the provision in the land policy which required that all plots be surveyed before allocation because of capacity constraints within government. ENDS