18 Nov 2025

The Minister of Water and Human Settlement, Mr Onneetse Ramogapi says government is committed to improving land services by putting in place plans for more efficient service delivery to the people.

 Responding to a parliamentary on Monday, Minister Ramogapi said government had commenced to improve land services adding that where it was practical, developments were already being put in place. In order to reach enhanced or optimal status, the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture would require further financial investment, Mr Ramogapi said. 

He said in the short term and in seeking to facilitate efficient and a more rapid issuance of secure land tittles, the ministry had taken a decision that land delivery processes that were not catered for in the electronic Land Information System (LIS) be carried out manually. Such processes, he noted included conveyancing, registration of land tittles, all land uses allocations, land transactions and printing of secure Land Tittle amongst others. 

The minister, who was responding on behalf of acting Minister of Lands and Agriculture,  Dr Edwin Dikoloti, explained that the decision was taken on the background that there were critical process gaps, which were overlooked during the implementation of the LIS development process.

Therefore, he said the problems now manifested as operational challenges that hindered timely customer facilitation. 

Furthermore, Mr Ramogapi told Parliament that new forms of land transactions continued to emerge, which carried underlying challenges and in order to deal with them in the short term, both the system and manual processes were used concurrently to ensure seamless service delivery. 

He said some legal bottlenecks were being addressed, noting that the review of the Deeds Registry Act was currently at an advanced stage. 

One of the key amendments to the Deeds Registry Act, he said, was to remove the requirement for outside figures in the old built up areas on the tribal land. Thus he said once passed, it was expected to unlock Secure Land Tittles in the old built up areas. 

Mr Ramogapi highlighted that the review was expected to be tabled during the current Parliament sitting. To prepare for this development, he said land boards had been directed to ensure that their Land Administration Committees met at least twice a month, to speed up consents and land transfers. Additionally, he said the delivery aspect was at times affected by the limited resources, especially where site visits had to be undertaken to produce sketch plans. 

The ministry, he noted was currently undertaking an exercise to rationalise staff across the land boards and the ministry at large, adding that the exercise was expected to be completed by February next year. 

Molepolole North Member of Parliament, Mr Arafat Khan had asked the minister of Lands and Agriculture whether there were any plans in place to transform and modernise the operations within the ministry, particularly to make it easier and faster for citizens to obtain land related services such as consents, transfers and tittle deeds. BOPA