By Felix Oketcho
Although land fraud and grabbing is on the increase, Ministry of lands has remarkably registered success by collecting shs 100billion from usage of national lands information system in land management, The ministry’s spokesman Dennis Obbo has revealed.
Speaking at Uganda revenue tax payer’s week to account for tax payers money Obbo attributed the success to good public adherence to the new computerized system in land registration of land titles.
Obbo said before they adopted the system in 2015 there we delays in land registration of titles, faltering of registration documents and land insecurity.
The national land information system implemented by ministry of land was funded by World Bank
A World Bank study conducted before the system showed that the average duration for title registration in Uganda was 270 days. It is within this context that Ugandan government wished modernized its procedures using World Bank funds.
This World Bank pilot project Design, Supply, Installation, Implementation of the Land Information System and Securing of Land Records has enabled Ugandans to secure property titles through the development of a tailor-made land information system with initial phase in 6 Ministry zonal offices (Kampala, Mukono, Wakiso, Jinja, Masaka and Mbarara), as well as creating the National Land Information Centre.
The system currently being implemented in 56 district however ministry officials says they will extend to other districts to improve service delivery and weed out land fraud in the country.
Statistics
According to Dennis Obbo Less than 80% of land in Uganda is registered and land governance is carried out manually despite of computerized system in place.
Obbo says this system is highly susceptible to inaccuracy and corruption.
He however calls upon government to fund the ministry to impellent its role and delivery service to tax payers.
“Despite the potential revenues, the land sector is severely under-resourced, resulting in delays, extremely poor service delivery and low levels of public confidence. This leaves us with a lot of challenges to address land administration and registration in Uganda and fraud as obstacle to the improvement of competitive enterprise development in the country, ”he said.
National land information system provides a secure, efficient, sustainable and cost effective land administration and registration system for the Republic of Uganda to improve service delivery in the land sector, facilitate enterprise development and strengthen public confidence in government.
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