Kaimenyi initiates reforms to tackle land issues
Lands Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi has said that his Ministry has come up with various reforms to tackle challenges in the lands sector bearing in mind that land is very key to economic development.
Land management in the Country has experienced a series skirmishes ranging from ownership and land grabbing with external factors like climate change and population growth making land management difficult.
There is also continued security complexity especially on good and sustainable management.
Among the common challenges in the lands sector are complex and outdated legal framework, lack of coherent policy framework, historical injustices, slums upgrading and disparities in lands distribution among others.
The new lands Ministry reforms include;
- Emphasizing the need for framework in the lands sector.
- Entrenchment of land issues.
- Ensuring more equitable distribution for agricultural land.
- Reforming of land tenure systems to capture and manage land.
Others are;
- Implementation of the National land information management systems documents.
- Safeguarding of papers and records at the lands headquarters.
- Modernization and digitizing of land access for easy online services and backup.
The CS said that land administration is also very key and for so long Africa has forgotten to properly implement it despite land being very expensive to purchase.
“Land administration refers in a broad sense to the process of determining, recording and disseminating information about tenure value and use land usually by a public agency”,Kaimenyi remarked.
Kaimenyi added that the Ministry has developed computer based property evaluation database and so far 3500 cases have been captured in the last one year. He also explained that land rent database systems developed can be accessed through mobile phones.
The CS also called upon other land bodies to sensitize thousands of citizens to collect their land titles for proper land ownership instead of them lying at the lands premises.
Kaimenyi furthered that his Ministry will collaborate with the Interior Ministry to avoid the issue of invading private lands against the constitution and will also ensure sanctity of title deeds.
