28 Jan 2020

Kgatleng Land Board is owed over P17 million in lease rentals, says the Board’s Chairperson, Ms Margret Mabua.

Addressing the first meeting for the year, Ms Mabua said government expected departments to generate their own funds, hence the revenue support grant provided was hinged on this ability.

She noted that the higher the lease debt, the less money government would give the board.

Ms Mabua said it had been three years since they took office but they had failed to collect debts owed to them.

She further said the district was in need of an updated and functional integrated land use plan. “The current plan is outdated and hardly in consent with expectations of the public at large and is further complicated by the fact that the tool is not gazetted,” he said, adding that the board had decided that the anomaly should henceforth be rectified.

Ms Mabua said while funding continued to be a challenge, a decision had been made that the plan would be reviewed in-house, in conjunction with the Department of Town Planning.

“To this end the ground force has already been appointed,” she said.  She said despite the board’s efforts in allocating land, some plots both residential and commercial remained.

Concerning land registration exercise which started in 2014, Ms Mabua said they were working hard to complete the project to assist in capturing data for land information system.

She announced that Kgatleng land board had been nominated to be one of the first land boards appointed to issue the secured land title.

“Recently, our parent ministry undertook end to end testing of the land information system and it was a success. It is now a matter of how ready we are as an establishment to issue titles,” said Ms Mabua.

She further said another challenge was land board policies which appeared to be in conflict with the national land policy and other legislation which she said were not standard across the establishments. Ms Mabua said the ministry’s target was to standardise the policies saying a task team had been appointed to spearhead the process. Ms Mabua further indicated that their mandate was to manage land for the socio-economic benefit of Botswana.

Speaking about the Mmamashia plan, Ms Mabua said due to its geographic advantage, with good infrastructure developments such as A1 and the railway, the area had seen major spill offs from Gaborone as it was directly linked to the Northern part of the country. She said pressure from Gaborone prompted planning of the area to meet demands of customers and facilitate a conducive business environment.

This, Ms Mabua said saw clients eagerly attempting to change their land use from agriculture to businesses.

She said some recommendations were made and adopted by the board, such as halting the developments and applications for change of land use for a period of six months while the structure plan was being prepared.

She noted that other recommendations were that the board should do open negotiations with plot owners and draw up a structure plan to incorporate already existing businesses. ENDS