State Minister for Lands Persis Namuganza has ordered for the closure of Wakiso District Land Offices to allow for system upgrade.
In the statement dated 3rd January, 2020 Namuganza said that after upgrading fully the system, offices will resume operations on January 21, 2020.
Among the offices affected are Wakiso ministry zonal office, Surveys and Mapping, Land registry and land administration.
“The temporary closure shall enable the carrying out of crucial system up-grades of the Land Information System (LIS) which cannot be done while the offices are open to the public. For that matter, there shall not be any transactions as well as the generation of deed plans as cartographic and survey operations will be stopped during the period of closure,” said Namuganza.
She added that during the temporary closure, the ministry will carry out LIS training sessions for all Wakiso Ministry zonal Office (MZO) staff on how to use the new software and continue with the on-job training of staff until January 20, 2020.
According to the minister, a total number of 394,000 land titles will be affected. About 202,000 are under Busiro while 192,000 under Kyadondo. The titles are Mailo, freehold and leasehold. The level of transactions in Busiro and Kyadondo counties has been very high and the ministry has promised that it’s mindful of the need to resume in the shortest time.
Last year, Busiro had around 480,000 transactions of land titles while in Kyadondo, 466, 000 were carried out.
She also noted that on January 21, they will re-open two offices to the public in two different locations, under the Wakiso MZO. These are Wakiso-Busiro offices based at the newly constructed building next to Police and Wakiso-Kyadondo offices based at the current MZO location.
Since the March in 2013, the Ministry of Lands has been implementing and updating different versions of software for all 20 MZOs registries apart from Wakiso.
The closure of Wakiso Land office has come at a time when corruption scandals ares still rife. In 2018, the State House Anti-Corruption Unit headed by Lt Col Edith Nakalema with the help of the elite presidential guards, regular army and police officers raided the office following lots of complaints of corruption from members of the public against the land officials. The Unit team confiscated all their electronic gadgets.
Also, the recently concluded Land Commission of Inquiry raided Wakiso land offices following complaints raised, pinning them of being manipulators, thieves and most corrupt land officials.
For example, the most trending complaint is about the same piece of land with multiple land titles.
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