Land fraud and ownership conflicts in Mombasa could be a thing of the past after the city’s governor Abdulswamad Nassir met with President William Ruto to facilitate digitisation.
The governor met Ruto at State House on Wednesday to discuss how the digitisation process of the parcels of land in the coastal city can be fast-tracked.
Speaking to the Star after his meeting, the governor said his administration is committed to ending once and for all the persistent land ownership wrangles that has stifled growth in the county.
He said the move will make detecting land fraud easy as every transaction will have footprint that can be traced.
The process will also see transactions go paperless and cut the waiting time that residents have had to endure to get land-related services.
“We want to ensure that parcels of land in the city are digitised to deal with fraud and ensure our people don’t get frustrated when seeking basic services that should spur growth,” the governor said.
All title deeds and records as well as payment of land rates will be digitised, he said.
“With issues like land use digitised, it will be easy to see at the tap of a button how a parcel of land is used and whether the owners are compliant with the law.”
Nassir also said he discussed with the President about the low-cost housing project in Mombasa in a bid to tap into the national government’s agenda of putting up affordable housing across the country.
Further, he said, he also discussed how the county and national government can manage the Mombasa port to generate mutual benefit for both entities.
The port has been a subject of strained relations between the two governments, with Ruto siding with the divide that had claimed that SGR had killed port operations to the detriment of the locals.
Some of the Mombasa residents, led by lobbies like MUHURI have been agitating for reverting management of the port to the county to save the local economy.
But the governor said his administration were on the throes of negotiations with the Ruto administration to work out a modality that will enable a win-win settlement.
“The President has directed the [Transport] ministry to engage us, and in fact, their officials have come to my office for the discussions. We are [in fact] finalising discussions. We have agreed to put up a marshaling yard to ensure trucks are controlled and put in one place. We also discussed with the President how Mombasa can get some level of support,” he said.
The governor also said they discussed about completion of the various infrastructure projects in the city to ease mobility and eliminate the congestion on the roads.
-Edited by SKanyara
