BATLA chair to crack the whip on defaulters
Among those who owe their lease agreements are ranch owners, mining companies, Water Utilities Corporation and politicians, said the president of Botswana Association of Tribal Land Authorities (BATLA) Kgang Kgang at a press conference in Gaborone on Wednesday (October 9, 2024).
Kgang had convened the briefing to explain that landboards are going to embark on a vigorous exercise to collect the debts before end of the 2024/2025 financial year.
He further noted that there are ongoing plot allocations across the country, including in Mogoditshane sub landboard, which last allocated plots in 1993 as a result of greedy landboard officials who later stole the available land for themselves.
“When Mogoditshane sub Landboard stopped allocations in 1993, the officials lied to the nation that there was no land, whilst the truth of the matter was that there was plenty of land. This delay caused the waiting list in Mogoditshane to go up to 140 000 applicants. We have worked with other landboards to reduce this waiting list to just over 40 000 and as we speak, there are plot allocations going on in Mogoditshane and surrounding areas,” said Kgang who is also Chairman of the Kweneng Main Lanboard.
He said that in their bid to fight corruption in Mogoditshane sub landboard, he was subjected to ridicule, verbal abuse and insults coupled with death wishes upon him.
He said after several years of digging out information, they unearthed a network of landboard officials, politicians, lawyers, and rich individuals who amassed huge chunks of land and sold it to unsuspecting members of the public.
He however noted that they have since managed to recover thousands of residential plots that were illegally allocated to some individuals by landboard officials; settled with those who genuinely believed the transactions were lawful, and that there will never be delays in plot allocations again.
He admitted that the Compensation in Kind model of payment to field owners was unlawful and that the anomaly is now a thing of the past.
Kgang also admitted that the production of Secure Land Tittle process was experiencing serious challenges and therefore BATLA was going to make a proposal to the Ministry of Lands and Water Resources to consider an option of availing them upon request by plot owners.
He holds the opinion that since the nation was moving digitisation of services, the SLTs could be kept as digital documents at Landboard offices.
According to Kgang, Landboards were focusing more on urban centers for production and release of SLTs since that is where there is a lot of land transactions taking place compared to rural areas.
