During land sector forums around the country, it’s easy to appreciate the knowledge gaps at local level. These gaps are exploited by brokers and insincere public officers at will. Humbled by the apparent sophistry and inaccessibility of county public officers, service seekers resort to unorthodox methods for solutions! Many needy citizens go to great lengths and costs to identify brokers or friends to intercede.

Having identified this problem through its regular score card surveys, the Land Development and Governance Institute set out to try and address the gap through land clinics. These are open public forums organized for citizens who wish to get solutions to their individual land issues. In the forums, land experts provide answers to specific land problems for free. The land clinics are simple and easy forums. After opening protocols by the County government, participating members of the public are guided to specialized desks.

The first desk is dedicated to general enquiries and also directs participants to other desks, depending on the nature of the problem. The desk on survey, sub-divisions and boundary disputes deals with the mundane issues of the process and costs of subdivision surveys, survey maps and resolving simple boundary disputes. The desk dedicated to planning addresses matters such as the process and costs of planning, change of user and acquisition of NEMA permits for development projects. The fourth and usually busiest desk handles matters relating to registration title to land. This desk helps to clarify the process and costs relating to registration of documents, obtaining official searches, transferring land, succession on death, compulsory acquisition and rates and rents on land.

The respective desks are manned by technical experts from the Institute with qualifications and experience in surveying, land economics, law, planning and environmental science, most of who are quite familiar with processes in county planning and surveying offices as well as the land registries. The Institute officers however man the desks together with public officers from the County and National governments such as the County Land Registrar, the County Surveyor, the County Planner and the County Land Officer, who usually also doubles as the County Valuer. The Governor or their representative, the County Executive Committee Member in charge of Land and the Chief Officer in charge of Land provide patronage to the forums in order to respond to any policy and executive related enquiries on the County.

The clinics, which have so far been organized in Machakos and Kajiado Counties and will also cover Kiambu for the initial phase, may be scaled up countrywide if successful at their pilot stage. They’ve had very good results so far, with all manner of issues fielded and answered on site. Where follow ups to some issues is necessary, participants are referred to specific officers in the county land offices. But I discuss these clinics here for the unexpected results that they have returned, beyond the objective of bridging the public knowledge gaps. First, the free open nature of the forums has brought the service seeking members of the public face-to-face with the public officers they may have for a long time desired to meet without luck. Rubbing shoulders freely with a county-based land registrar or surveyor and directly asking questions without having to go through layers of clerks and/or secretaries has been so disarming and fulfilling for most. Those who attend the clinics have been able to appreciate that some of these men and women from the revered offices are after all quite likeable and approachable on a one to one. The officers were in return humbled by the simplicity of the land issues that hold back many families from moving their land transactions in land offices. Where necessary public officers provided their personal telephone contacts for ease of follow ups! With time, such direct contact could deal a big blow to cases of routine corruption, which is in many cases fueled by the perceived inaccessibility of public officers.

In addition, the clinics are helping to promote familiarity and purpose between officers of the new county governments and the continuing officers of the national government. This is good for policy planning and land sector service delivery. Yet, these unexpected but helpful outputs have been achieved through fairly humble costs. I suggest that Counties consider organizing similar forums routinely in order to demystify land office operations and promoting familiarity between service seeking citizens and county public officers.