Ngilu sets 2-week target for online land deals

Key transactions such as land registration, service payments and document searches will be available online in two weeks as the government steps up reforms to curb graft in the land sector.

Cabinet secretary Charity Ngilu said the operations of all key departments in the ministry had been linked electronically to boost efficiency, reducing the length of land transactions from 73 to 16 days.

“This is a one-stop shop for Kenyans who are seeking services in the ministry of Lands — from survey, adjudication and registration,” she told a stakeholders consultative forum at the National Titling Centre in Nairobi on Wednesday.

Ms Ngilu said the government had invested about Sh500million to put up and equip a special centre to enable citizens access services online and reduce human contact, which has been blamed for fraudulent deals.

“We want to do away with moving huge volumes of files from one point to another while transacting land business,” she said.

Ms Ngilu said the centre, once fully operation in a fortnight, will embark on an ambitious programme of ensuring that all land owners have title deeds.

“We are targeting to have one million title deeds within the remaining period of the year so that in three years’ time we issue three million title deeds,” said Ms Ngilu.

The minister said only 5.6 million title deeds had been issued since Independence despite the large tracts of land that had no official ownership documents.

She defended her decision to suspend land transactions for 10 days saying this was to ensure order in the ministry.

“The suspension of services at the ministry of lands is good for every Kenyan. Within that period Kenyans should report cases of all missing files and which must be brought back within that period failure to which they will not be accepted again,” said Ms Ngilu.

She said Kenyans are losing billions of shillings due to delays in processing of title deeds by the government.

“Suppose we are producing one million title deeds and earning Sh100? That translates to about Sh1 billion and with three million title deeds that is about Sh3 billion that we are sitting on,” she said.

Adopted from the Businessdailyafrica.com