WINDHOEK – The Ministry of Lands and Resettlement will as of September start piloting the much-awaited Flexible Land Tenure System (FLTS) that will survey and register land rights in the country to make land available to low-income groups.
The programme will ease access to affordable land, credit investment and development for low-income groups particularly in the informal settlements across the country. It is estimated that about 70 percent of people living in informal settlements will have obtained FLTS land rights by December 2017. It is also expected that FLTS will assist in attaining some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and that significant improvement to the lives of slum-dwellers could be attained by 2030. Since early last year, there has been an outcry from informal settlement dwellers for the speedy implementation of the Flexible Land Tenure Bill, which is expected to help the landless majority in the country. In April 2012, the Flexible Land Tenure Bill was passed by the National Assembly without amendments. The Act aims to accelerate access to land and security of tenure in informal urban areas.
Speaking to New Era yesterday on the progress made regarding the implementation process, FLTS Project Coordinator, Lasse Mvula said currently the ministry is busy working on the regulations which go parallel with the consolidation of the impending pilot exercise.
“Thereafter piloting starts in September and is expected to be complete before the end of the financial year,” Mvula explained. The current formal freehold tenure system is cumbersome, expensive and not within the reach of many people and to compound matters there is limited professional surveying and conveyancing capacity available in the country. To overcome these limiting factors, Mvula said the Act makes provision for the establishment of local Land Rights Offices (LRO’s) and introduces starter and land hold titles on land situated within municipalities, towns and villages and within settlement areas.
The Act also envisages that the LRO’s be staffed by a land rights registrar, a land measurer (assistant land surveyor) and a registration officer. “We need to have a scheme creation process with a full-swing implementation strategy countrywide. But first we have to complete the regulations with practical demonstration case studies in order to avoid policy amendments immediately after completion,” he noted. He further said the ministry also has to regulate the Act in a parallel pilot consolidation exercise as a pre-requisite and match the regulations with real facts interpretation on the ground. “Only then can we come up with a comprehensive integrated vision and action preparation plan to the Flexible Land Tenure resolution,” Mvula stressed.
Other objectives the ministry has is mind is that the FLTS implementation programme outputs be that 70 percent of urban land status is indentified and that obstacles preventing land availability are also identified and addressed. Mvula highlighted that FLTS is a community driven process that allows planning processes to be completed at a ward or local level. There is an increasing number of people residing in informal settlements with little or no access to proper accommodation, sanitation, water and other services. It is estimated that there are 135 000 families, consisting of at least 540 000 individuals, living in more than 230 informal settlements across Namibia.
Story by Albertina Nakale