29 Jan 2020

Kgatleng Land Board chairperson says the district has a total of 176 431 unscreened residential plots applications.

Addressing a board meeting recently, Ms Margret Mabua, said the board had 5 695 applications for ploughing fields.

She said 63.6 per cent of the residential applications were registered at Oodi Sub-land Board.

Ms Mabua said the board was faced with the challenge of land shortage since most plot owners preferred sub-divisions of their land as opposed to compensation amounts offered towards village expansion.

She further noted that there was also a challenge of illegal land occupants.

Ms Mabua said in Artesia, the board had identified seven illegal land occupants at Mmakgomo, Lokgalo, Thatatswane and Boswelakgama.

She said the sub-land board had been monitoring illegal land occupation in the communal areas, where some people fenced communal grazing areas, adding that, ‘Some have been called to appear before the board’.

Mmathubudukwane identified a squatter at Rabotsiripa lands, whose profiling was done and was called before the board in the current sitting.

Ms Mabua indicated that in Mochudi, the sub-land board had identified eight squatters who were scheduled to have appeared before the November 2019 meeting.

Giving a summary of appeals, she said a total of 104 cases were received by the land board during this financial year.

She said 77 were new cases of which 56 had been resolved within three months and 27 backlog cases were resolved also, while the rest were ongoing with four outside time.

She noted that 85 cases had been appealed to courts of lawand they included encroachment, rejection of applications and change of land use.

Challenges faced by the board, she said, included failure to honour board meetings by clients, sketch plans with inadequate/unclear information, appeals lodged outside stipulated times due to late receipt of resolution letters from sub-land boards, insufficient and missing information, shortage of staff and budget constraints.

Ms Mabua further indicated that the board continued to drive the anti-corruption campaign, especially in the Oodi Sub-land Board area.

She said the development of Gaborone had led to shortage of land and subsequently an increase in demand has put pressure on tribal land surrounding the city, which has resulted in increased value of land. ENDS