Cabinet Secretary Zachariah Njeru holds a very wide cabinet portfolio. It consists of Lands and Physical Planning, Housing and Public Works, and the Urban Development dockets. I cannot recall any other Lands Minister who ever held all these in one. Mr Njeru will therefore find himself extremely busy. He will need our support. Luckily for us, the Lands docket provides space and rights upon which housing, public works and urban development happen. The Minister’s efforts in Lands will therefore manifest and support his efforts in the other dockets.
Ardhisasa should expedite transactions
Delays in land transactions have for instance impended the expedient provision of land for housing and the development of infrastructure over the years. The Minister now has the discretion to have all these work in complementarity within this expanded portfolio. But the one thing he must first fix to attain efficiency is the online land management system, dubbed ardhisasa, which was launched in April 2021. The intentions of establishing this online system remain noble, the initial policy and technical hitches notwithstanding. It will help to expedite land transactions; it will immortalize our land records in better form and will help to disseminate land records countrywide real-time. It also substantially reduces human interfacing, and the consequent motivation for rent seeking.