Stop illegal plot allocation
Lands minister warns cadres, councillors
By MAKOKWA CLARA MUYENDEKWA
UPND cadres and councilors have been warned against allocating land to themselves.
Minister of Lands and Natural Resources on Elijah Muchima sounded the warning in Southern Province when he paid a courtesy call on Permanent Secretary Dr Namani Moonze yesterday.
Mr Muchima called for discipline, explaining that only authorised people should handle land matters and not cadres.
Mr Muchima said anyone found grabbing and selling off land should be reported to police and advised that councilors should only have access to land through their established committees.
“I am minister of land but I cannot just go and start grabbing land because that is abuse of office. That’s why councils should not have absolute power over land.” said Mr Muchima.
He stressed that there is need to preserve land as the population will increase in the next 10 years but will still need to find land for livestock.
And Mr Muchima said there are some churches which are in the forefront of evicting people out of land after acquiring it for purposes of building churches.
He said such churches are in the habit of later dividing land and selling to people while disadvantaging locals.
Mr Muchima warned that the ministry will soon go through all documentation and get back any land that was illegally acquired.
Meanwhile Mr Muchima said government is targeting to issue out 4 000 000 titles in the Land title national program.
He also disclosed that the ministry will look into creating an effective registry as itt has been a source of corruption.
“Title deeds come out in a day when there is interest and the same speed should apply even for a common person and we must fight corruption,” said Mr Muchima.
He explained that this will reduce interaction among people, money and documents which will in turn leave no room for corruption.
This comes after Southern Province Permanent Secretary Dr Namani Moonzeasked the minister to quickly actualize the national land titling program.
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