Ministry of Lands CS Alice Wahome has revealed that her ministry has forwarded crucial ownership documents to the team of DCI probing the controversy surrounding the Mavoko land ownership tussle.
Wahome on Thursday confirmed that her ministry is in possession of all ownership documents and historical information with respect to LR 10424 registered in the name of East African Portland Cement Company Limited.
“Any other documents purported to be held in respect to the said land do not originate from this office. The ministry has already forwarded the relevant documents to the DCI to support the ongoing investigations,” she said.
“I wish to advise the public that there are people out there conning members of the public to buy land using share certificates. Share certificates are not legal documents to confirm ownership.”
In Mavoko, a number of buildings have been brought down by bulldozers over ownership wrangles.
The CS who addressed the press at her Ardhi House offices further advised that when purchasing land, buyers should carry out due diligence by checking the status from our land offices and obtaining maps from our survey department.
Two weeks ago, the ministry launched a countrywide exercise to undertake an audit of Lands offices across the country and to also roll out cashless transactions for all services.
Wahome said the exercise has been successful and the teams that went around the country have come back with positive reports.
“The exercise was successful in laying down the infrastructure for digitization and automation of services. Every land office now has computers and internet connections," she said.
"We now have a complete data bank that will support digitization of land records, enhance revenue through automation, and improve service delivery.”
Wahome said going cashless will help net more revenue.
“When we talk about enhancing revenue collection, we are talking about sealing all loopholes that have been traditionally used to steal public revenue," she said.
"Before making the decision to launch the cashless policy nationwide, we piloted the program in 17 stations in the wider Nairobi Metropolitan area. During the pilot, we realized that the revenue collected in a day was what was formerly collected over a whole week.”
Wahome said land rent collected annually has been increasing due to automation.
She said land rent collected in 2021 was Sh466, 545, 000 which has grown to Sh937, 511,723 in 2022.
Wahome said there are several programmes being rolled out at the ministry to enhance service delivery.
The programmes include titling and settlement, survey and mapping programme, digitization of lands processes and transactions, and de-centration of land services and processes.
Others are legal, policy and institutional reforms, standardization of physical planning nationally, land value indexing for all the counties and valuation of assets formally owned by the defunct local government.
