16 Aug 2022

Ministry of Lands and Water Affairs through the department of Surveys and Mapping has taken a decision to outsource land surveying services to speed up land allocation.

Addressing Ghanzi land board management on Monday, Acting Deputy Permanent Secretary- land management portfolio in the Ministry of Lands and Water Affairs, Mr Kealeboga Kemoreile said the exercise would help government attain a target of allocating 100 000 plots by the end of December.

He said the decision to engage private land surveyors came after identifying factors concerning land allocation, including bottlenecks in delaying land allocation.

Mr Kemoreile was adamant that the outsourcing exercise would accelerate land allocation looking at the 63 126 plots to be surveyed from a total of 140 layouts from all 12 land boards across the country.

He, therefore, said the engaged companies would be expected to survey a total of 63 126 plots.

“Each company is expected to survey 1 000 to 2 000 plots depending on the number of available companies while others will be responsible for the examination of survey records and subsequently make recommendations to the director- department of surveys for the final decision,” he said.

Mr Kemoreile said companies would be engaged through Botswana Land Surveying Council and all registered surveyors stand a chance to benefit.

The invitation to tender, he said would be done this Friday and said it was expected that plots would be ready for allocation by end of October.

In his welcome remarks, the deputy chairperson of Ghanzi land board, Mr Patrick Thupe said it would be ideal to have another sub-land board since Ghanzi Land Board had jurisdiction over 16 villages of which 6 were administered by Charleshill Sub Land Board and 10 by the Ghanzi main Land Board.

‘’The ideal situation would be for the 10 villages to be administered by another sub-land board to enable the main Land Board to focus on strategic and policy issues as well as appeals from sub-land boards as opposed to the current situation where the main Land Board is a referee and a player. 

Having another sub-land board will also be in harmony with Council and District Administration boundaries,’’ Mr Thupe said.

Also, he said Charleshill and Makunda were the only villages with a development plan in the district (2012 -2036) while for the rest of the other villages, physical development was based on consultation with communities and various government departments.

Mr Thupe said a design team had been established comprising of district physical planners and land board technical team to monitor the preparation of layouts submitted to physical planning.

 He said currently survey teams were on site and planning to survey a total of 1 756 plots at Karakubis, Charleshill, Ncojane, Makunda and Kole and the survey was expected to be complete by October.

He said the surveyed layout of 417 plots had recently been approved in New Xanagas and would be handed over at the next sub land board meeting with allocation expected to commence in September or October.

He said as of August 8, Ghanzi Land Board waiting list for residential plots had 7 892 applications.

“This is a net decrease of 4 402 or 35.8 per cent compared to April  1 2022. Allocation of plots is waiting  ongoing to  to reduce the waiting list,” he said.

 He was concerned that currently, the applicants do not honour invitations to allocations preferring more developed villages.

Regarding revenue collection, he said the land board was owed a total amount of P11.6 million on lease rentals while P373 853 had been collected from April 2022.

He detailed that the land board had put in place a revenue collection strategy to expedite collection by calling business owners to remind them of their debts, sending reminders through bulk SMSs, physical follow-ups to the grantees, as well as sending reminders through letters and invitations to appear before the Board.

In his address, the President of Botswana Association of Tribal Land Authorities (BATLA), Mr Johane Chenjekwa appealed to all embrace the country’s reset agenda as it called all land board members to do things differently and efficiently.

‘’When the President of the country took an oath to serve Batswana he meant through your input of allocating land to Batswana and investors. You are holding this land in trust for Batswana and as such their interests should be served and you should execute your duties” he said.

He said implementation of land-related reforms such as the re-enactment of the Tribal Land Act – 2018, Deeds Registry Amendment Act, 2019, and Botswana Land Policy 2015 as amended in 2019 were aimed at accelerating land allocations. Ends