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MINSTRY OF LANDS AND HOUSING
OPEN/CUSTOMER DAY
SPEECH DELIVERED BY MS. TUTU TSIANG- DEPUTY
PERMANENT SECRETARY CORPORATE SERVICES
ON THE 8 TH DECEMBER 2012 IN JWANENG – MALL
THEME: “PRODUCTIVE USE OF LAND, KEY TO POVERTY
ERADICATION”

Director of Ceremony
Your Worship the Mayor of Jwaneng
District Commissioner
Dikgosi tsotlhe tse di leng hano
Councillors
Land Board Chairpersons
Land Board Secretaries
Heads of Central Government Departments
Chief Executive Officers of Parastatal Organisations
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
Director of Ceremony
Ke lo dumedisa ka PULA!
1. It gives me great pleasure to be with you this morning at
the Ministry of Lands and Housing Open Day. This is an
important day in the annual calendar of the Ministry as it
gives us the opportunity to interact with you, our valued
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customers. It is an occasion when the whole Ministry
gathers to show-case our products and services.
I
therefore, appreciate your presence here today.
2. Ministry of Lands and Housing especially our Land Boards
has mainly been taking services to the people by way of
road shows, open days, kgotla meetings and stakeholders’
workshops. During these activities we offer services such as
issuing of certificates, signing of leases, attending to
complaints and pending issues.
Most importantly we
inform the public about the services or products we offer.
Equally important we get feedback from our customers
and stakeholders on how they feel about the services we
provide. The history of our Open Days dates back to 2008
and have been held annually. This is the second time this
event is hosted by a Land Board and our intention for the
future is to give other Land Boards an opportunity to host
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it on a rotational basis. This is to make sure that our
coverage is extended to the whole country.
3. Director of Ceremony, this year’s Open Day is held under
the theme
“Productive use of Land, key to poverty
eradication.” The theme is informed by some of the
observations that we make as we manage and administer
land in relation to its optimum utilization. These
observations include among others slow development of
plots - High default rates in terms of compliance with terms
of offer – allottees fail to develop their plots within the
given time. In the rural areas, allottees indicate that they
are not able to develop their plots on time because there
are no services such as water and roads, while in urban
areas, the reasons are mainly inability to pay for and
develop the plot. Neglected ploughing fields also raise a
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serious concern as this compromises the surface area of
land that could be producing food to sustain the nation.
4. Botswana as a developing country has been affected by the
increase in the number of people self-allocating land. The
Ministry is then compelled to open up new areas for
allocation of land for residential use while land already
allocated remains undeveloped. This growth unfortunately
expands to arable and grazing areas thereby crippling the
agricultural subsector, the very basis for our livelihood.
That land would have otherwise been planned and put to
optimum utilization.
Undeveloped ploughing fields and commercial farms
cannot in anyway help alleviate poverty when they go to
waste.
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The overall intention for planning and zoning land for
commercial or even subsistence agriculture is that it should
produce to feed both the family units and have surplus to
feed the nation. But when this land remains undeveloped
or fallow for extended periods, it results in food
importation. Food importation already puts pressure in
resources that could be used elsewhere.
The effects of squatting are quite significant and affect both
the economic, social and environmental aspects of the
country on the following grounds;
Put a lot of pressure on natural resources like trees for
firewood.
Pollute the environment as they are no services
provided to them for sanitation.
Lawlessness in such areas as there are no law
enforcement agencies.
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Substance abuse of alcohol and drugs.
High rate of illiteracy especially for children as parents
are reluctant to take children to school.
Unavailability of services like health, sanitation or
infrastructure.
Those who are evicted regroup and relocate to other
areas, or come back to areas they were evicted from.
Mushrooming of settlements thus stretching resources
for monitoring and evicting.
In short, such effects reverse the gains we make in our
efforts to eradicate poverty.
5. Director of Ceremony
In order to ensure that land is optimally utilized,
settlement development plans have been prepared for
urban areas, major and secondary villages. Plans for
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tertiary villages have also been prepared. For NDP 10, a
total of 16 Development Plans have been prepared. The
Ministry has also prepared 10 District Settlements
Strategies, these are meant to guide the level of investment
and infrastructure provision in settlements in accordance
with the National Settlement Policy. 2 Regional Master
Plans have also been prepared as part of the
implementation of the National Settlement Policy. The
Ministry has adopted an approach to create value to its
customers by continuous commitment of optimizing use of
land to attain value for Land. In this endeavor, the
Ministry prepares Land Use Plans and monitors adherence
to the development plans and development covenant.
6. The Ministry also avails land to potential investors,
through prompt acquisition of Land, Surveying, and
Servicing of land. Furthermore, the Ministry has adopted a
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strategy that seeks continuous involvement of its customers
to improve service delivery, consequently, a
Communication Plan has been drawn covering Kgotla
Meetings, Road Shows, Pitso, Open Days, Radio
programmes, Websites, TV shows and many others. To
sustain the above strategies, MLH aims at ensuring its
readiness through the support of continuous organizational
learning and growth. This is attained by increasing staff
competency, through long and short term trainings.
7. The theme for this day is also partly influenced by the
feedback that we get from you through kgotla meetings,
call centre enquiries, walk in customers, road shows and
other stakeholder meetings. During our interactions with
our customers and stakeholders, frequently asked questions
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and raised issues centre around the modalities of leasing
land to developers.
8. During the course of the day we will inform, educate and
communicate with you on our services and products as we
would like you to appreciate the challenges that we face in
the delivery of land and provision of housing. We would
also appreciate if we could get feedback from you on our
products and the quality of our services. In other words
we will spend the day sharing information.
Information sharing is very important and is in line with
one of our Vision 2016 Pillars of “An informed and
Educated Nation”.
9. My Ministry is undertaking an Organization and Methods
so that it could effectively and efficiently deliver on its
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mandate. This exercise comes primarily because the current
Ministry structure has been found to be one of the areas
that affect service delivery.
We are also on a massive campaign to have all allocated
land in the country surveyed and registered, the overall
intention being to eradicate poverty. When all plots are
surveyed, it will be easier to access loans from banks to
develop land. It will also be easy to allocate land equitably
such that individuals will not be able to own multiple
plots.
In addition to that, my Ministry is also standardizing
processes across the Land Boards so that Land
Administration procedures in all Land Boards are the same.
The same way the Police and Hospitals operate. For
instance, same procedures followed in Kasane are followed
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in Tsabong. This will in turn improve service delivery and
predictability.
10. Director of Ceremony
In order to promote optimum utilization of land to deal
with poverty the following Policies and Acts are currently
being reviewed;
Development Control Code – to be aligned to
development dynamics and emerging land uses; efficient
land utilization and to regulate a wider range of land use
activities.
Land Policy is currently being reviewed, - currently policies
which guide the management of land are disjointed, there
was therefore a need to come up with a comprehensive
policy that addresses all issues of land management and
administration in a comprehensive manner.
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Town and Regional Country Planning Act – for
decentralization of planning functions to the local
authorities for timeous decision making on developmental
proposals and conducive investment environment.
11. Director of Ceremony
Before I conclude my remarks I would like to pledge that
my Ministry will continue to improve on land
administration in order to make it easier for you to access
the relevant services. I therefore, appeal to all of you to
support the efforts we are making. For instance I would
urge our customers and stakeholders to develop the land
allocated to them and comply with the development
covenants and standards.
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12. Director of Ceremony,
More information and details are displayed at the stalls. I
encourage you to visit them and when you get there, ask
questions so that you could get more informed and use the
acquired information or knowledge to access land and
housing related services and most importantly address
poverty through optimum use of land.
I wish you a pleasant day.
PULA! PULA! PULA!
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