The Lands Ministry has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons. Discussions have moved from who should issue titles to who ought to sign them. But what’s hidden behind this war of words is a subtle contest for the control of allocation of public land. This is what no one seems to explicitly mention. Otherwise the act of signing and physically handing over titles, if there has been compliance with all process issues, need not be overplayed.

Attention diverted from fundamental issues

What upsets practitioners and others who know the current state of affairs in the Lands Ministry is that these wars are diverting energy and attention from other fundamental concerns. Developers will tell you that they still wait for far too long to get approvals to their development applications, something that should worry the new policy drivers in the Ministry. Remember the Ministry is also currently facing reports of fraudulently obtained titles, which, if not promptly and properly handled, could see the country lose colossal sums of money through ‘out of court settlements”. This raises the question of the reliability of records held by the Ministry. The question ‘when a land record is not a good record’ still begs. And this will only be resolved through a thorough audit of all the existing records to set aside the suspect ones. The good records would then be computerized. At the moment, efforts to computerize land records remain disparate. The Ministry continues to play public relations with the issue year after year. Remember assurances on this began soon after the assumption of the NARC government. Over a decade later, the report card on the matter does not inspire.

Then reports from Land Registries around the country paint a picture of inefficiency and corruption in service delivery. This continues to affect the speed and cost of land transactions. If the Jubilee government wishes to turn around our economic fortunes, these are key high level issues that those appointed to steer the Ministry and the Land Commission must accord priority attention. Without reliable digital records and functional land registries, our future with land administration will be bleak. Even if we managed to issue many more millions of titles in hard copy, challenges of duplication and retrieval will continue to frustrate and encourage corruption. Sadly, if the teams at Lands perpetuate their supremacy wars, they will not settle well enough to formulate and iimplement suitable solutions.

Transparency required on recent allocations of public and community land

At the same time, the Ministry and the Land Commission must remember that they remain accountable to the public for their commissions and omissions. For instance, there are reports that there have been attempts to subdivide and allocate public land belonging to the Numerical Machines Complex at Athi River. If this is true, then some questions beg. Is it the Ministry or the Land Commission that authorized the survey? Was due process followed and who are the intended beneficiaries? At this time when there is dire shortage of public land, any proposed subdivision of public land, which has not been transparently explained, attracts suspicion. Then there has been several gazette notices issued lately by the Ministry and the Land Commission to allocate community land to individuals at the Coast. Yet the constitution outlawed the disposal of former trust land, now community land, until there is legislation specifying the nature and extent of the rights of community members. This legislation is still under preparation. So on what basis did the Ministry and the Commission set apart community land at the Coast? These early signs are quite ominous and vigilance is required.