Jerry Silaa, the Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development minister, made this affirmation when inaugurating the land clinic format at the ministry’s city offices yesterday.
Zonal assistant land commissioners along with regional land officers will prepare land clinic schedules to ensure the presence of the minister or deputy minister, he stated.
All those with land problems can submit their complaints and get solutions to the issues from top government officials, he said when reviewing achievements of his 100 days in office since being appointed by President Samia Suluhu Hassan back in August.
Affirming that “land problems in the country are very serious” he was of the view that setting up one stop land clinics in all regions at the start of the new year will help sort out many problems.
He was convinced that the open clinics will be a great help to solve problems of many people in a short time, so long as the clinics are attended by government officials all the time “so that all citizens can hear how problems are solved.”
Land clinics throughout the country must held in open areas like tents to avoid any semblance of secrecy, he said, emphasizing that the government wants citizens to meet the relevant government officials in one place.
This will help to eliminate the loopholes of corruption and inconveniences of going back and forth, he said, urging zonal assistant land commissioners to prepare a schedule of land clinics to listen to the concerns of citizens.
The clinics need the presence of top ministerial officials will enable government officials to be present at the clinics, if not the minister then the deputy minister or the permanent secretary will have to be present, “so that the people can find solutions to their problems there."
He said that this structure is vital as often the problem lies with land officials, so the top leaders of the ministry need to be there for them to make decisions on such situations.
Improvements will be made in ministerial offices to install cameras showing the length of stay in office in order to eliminate the culture of government employees neglecting their duties.
"I want to see that when a leader comes and asks where the land officers are, they can see them by their faces and names through electronic devices. If this happens it will raise accountability levels for land officers," he said.
Improvements in policy, legislation and regulations as well as revisiting the current land laws are in the offing, to amend the laws and have laws and regulations that can provide answers to the current land problems.
Improvements will be made to ensure that all areas in the country are surveyed, in collaboration with verified private companies, he said, noting that earlier many land surveying companies did not meet the criteria required.
They took people's money and failed to complete the work, but the ministry has conducted screening and deregistered them, he affirmed, noting that rapid growth of cities is not compatible with the government's speed of surveying areas.
“So we have seen that we must have a strategy to control the situation and to begin with, I direct our experts from the whole country to start conducting preliminary surveys," he specified.
The minister said that within 100 days he has visited 975 villages to implement cabinet orders and he is satisfied with the speed of regional commissioners to solve concerns regarding land.
To make it easier to solve chronic land disputes, especially in the city of Dar es Salaam, the ministry was looking into converting administrative districts in the city into land regions.
"To show that we are serious, we have suspended 13 land officers, we should fire them but we have suspended them for investigation because the law requires us to do so,” he stated. But for all purposes they are not supposed to be government officers anymore, he added.
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