- The team dispatched will access the staff, the infrastructure in the registries, and the space among other aspects.
- Njeru said the state is keen to digitise land records.
Image: HANDOUT
The Ministry of Lands has dispatched eight teams to audit land registries across the country in readiness for the roll out of the ambitious digitisation of records.
The teams will access the readiness of land registries across the country for digitisation and explore how such registries will do transactions without the use of cash.
They were dispatched at Ardhi House on Monday by Lands Cabinet Secretary Zachariah Njeru and Principal Secretary Nixon Korir and are set to start their work at the Coast, Nyanza, Central, Western, Nyanza and Rift Valle regions.
Njeru said his ministry is committed to improve service delivery and reduce the complaints that have often been associated with transactions at the ministry.
“The team has been given 14 days to check land registries in terms of record keeping because we want to improve on service delivery of our citizens,” Njeru said.
During the event, over 260 computers were also dispatched to land registries across the country.
The CS pledged to use the information collected to ensure that service delivery is quickly and efficient.
“We are hoping that after the two weeks, we are going to get good reports that will make us improve on where we have been slow, where we have not been doing things right,” Njeru said.
The team dispatched will access the staff, the infrastructure in the registries, and the space among other aspects.
Njeru said the state is keen to digitise land records.
The National Land Information Management System also known as Ardhisasa was launched on April 27, 2021, and was supposed to cure challenges facing the land sector.
Developed by a team of Kenyan techies over a three-year period, Ardhisasa was designed to enhance the security of land records, speed up land transactions and curb fraud.
The platform sought to limit or remove the human element and interaction as much as possible and frustrate land cartels that had overrun corridors at the ministry.
Under the new system, a Kenyan can search for land transactions, transfers and registrations at the comfort of their home.
At the click of a button, citizens will carry out online transactions, drastically reducing human interactions—a frequent source of fraud and a definite cause of delays and inconveniences.
The system will require the Lands ministry to digitise land records, streamlining records of transactions and ownership, a move that was aimed at eliminating fraud, corruption and manipulation of critical land records.
The system was also meant to do away with long queues at the registries.
The CS said some of the challenges associated with the new system have been resolved and all the players are now embracing it.
PS Korir said digitisation of other registries will be rolled out immediately after the team has compiled and handed over the various reports.
“First, we need to scan all the documents that we have in our registries and be available in electronic platform. Such that if anything was to happen like the one that happen in Nyando where our registry got burned and we lost all the documents, we should be able to reconstruct immediately because we will be having the scanned documents,” Korir said.
The Ardhisasa platform is operational in Nairobi and plans are underway to expand it countrywide.
Korir said the ministry intends to roll out the new system in Murang’a within this financial year.
He said the ministry will then move to digitize Mombasa highland, Machakos, Isiolo, Uasin Gishu, and Nandi.
Korir said the ministry is also keen to go cashless in all the registries.
The move, Korir said, will cut out middlemen milking Kenyans dry.
“For a service that we offer at Sh500, the members of the public are being charged close to Sh5,000 for that service by the middle men. Members of the public will pay the actual figure and there will be no middlemen.”
Korir said cashless has been adopted within the headquarters as well as in metropolitan towns such as Kiambu, Machakos and Kajiado.
“Within the 14 days, we intend to go cashless in all our registries. We have a system called Ardhi Pay which we have developed and it is linked to the E-Citizen platform that the government announced,” Korir said.
Korir said Ardhisasa platform has a provision for cashless payments.
“You register for the Ardhi Pay by going to ardhisasa.lands.go.ke to register. You are required to provide ID number, email address and phone number. When you register, there is a provision for Ardhi Pay," he said.
“If you want to do a search, you go to Ardhi Pay, click the county, Registry, enter your details; you pay and present yourself to the registry just like you do for certificate of good conduct.”
He said going cashless will also mitigate loss of revenue.
Korir said they have agreed with KRA that the ministry can be a one stop shop where one can pay stamp duty without having to go to the authority.
He said Treasury has provided a separate account for stamp duty where members of the public can process and pay stamp duty at Ardhi House or the registries before the money is wired to KRA.
Korir decried staff shortage saying the valuation is the most affected in terms of personnel employment at 22 per cent.
He said the Treasury has approved the employment of additional 100 valuers.
Currently, the ministry has 53 valuers in the entire country.