Lands Cabinet Secretary Zacharia Njeru has said that cartels have been controlled through the digitisation of the lands sector.
The CS said through digitization, the government is slowly taming the cartels at land registries that, for many years, had been a common subject, giving the sector a bad name.
"It’s no longer business as usual in Ardhi House. I am glad to inform Kenyans that these (cartels) will now be history with digitisation. Our digitisation and automation policy will sideline cartels,” Njeru said.
He spoke during an interview on Sunday.
The CS revealed that the cartels were many because the manual system had hitches and many wanted shortcuts.
Njeru further explained that with the manual system, there was a lot of insecurity in the land records.
"There were instances that land records were disappearing, and mutated, and this has adversely affected Kenyans when they want to transact on matters of land,” he said.
However, with digitisation, the CS said Kenyans can get land information, and do transactions without having to come to Ardhi house.
“The cure for cartels is digitization and that’s why we are keen to ensure it works,” Njeru said.
The CS said digitisation is one of the reform processes the Kenya Kwanza government embarked on to streamline the sector.
“I want to thank those who were before me because they had attempted to digitize land records and where we started from, I want to tell Kenyans we are doing well. When we are fully digitised, it will mean Kenyans will get services in a better, faster and more secure way,” Njeru said,
He had earlier said that digitisation of land records for Nairobi County is nearly complete and the services will soon be launched in Mombasa and Muranga.
Njeru said the challenges were a result of oversights during the initial development of the system.
He noted that the State Department for Lands and Physical Planning has been working hard to improve efficiency at Ardhi House and has made commendable progress in boosting the integrity of service provision.
As a result of these efforts, the CS said, the processing of title deeds is today done more quickly than in the past.
