NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug, 5 – The Ministry of Lands will create modules and interfaces on the current land digital platforms to allow professionals to transact land issues without visiting the mandated office.
Lands Cabinet Secretary (CS) Farida Karoney said the Ministry had digitized the registration and records of land in order to manage land in a transparent and accountable manner.
Ms. Karoney however, attributed the delay in transactions to the verification process, which she noted was necessary for ensuring that landowners who have private titles to public property do not go away with it.
“Persons registered in public lands and two people owning titles of the same land shall not transact until the process of verification is done to allow them to do their transactions,” she stated.
The CS was speaking on Wednesday during an open forum to discuss the challenges that clients face at the Lands Registry, which brought together the Ministry of Lands, the Council of the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), and the Institution of Surveyors of Kenya at a Nairobi hotel.
The challenges discussed included the Ardhisasa Platform, issues on the central registry, conversion of titles, and long-term leases and sectional titles under Section Title Act, 2020.
Karoney pointed out that the Sectional Property Act 2020 required the Ministry to convert existing properties long-term leases of apartments to the framework of the Sectional Property Act of 2020.
She said the regulation took a long time and they have until December to implement the law.
“For new apartments, we shall register them under Secured Acts of 2020, for already existing apartments where half of the leases are registered in the framework of long-term leases, we will allow the rest of the leases to be registered and then they can convert to Sectional Act of Property 2020,” said Karoney.
She added that the long-term leases over land will be allowed to transact in digital platforms until the geo reference law is required.
On issues concerning missing files, the CS stated that due to the transition phase from a manual system to a digital platform, a lot of files will go missing but they will work with the land donors to solve the problem.
“If your file is missing you can now download it on Electronic Document Management Platforms,” advised Karoney.
The government is responsible for land management according to Article 60 and Article 68 of the Lands Act.
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