Govt improves land tenure plan

Dar es Salaam. The Ministry of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development, in collaboration with an international consortium led by the France-based-IGN FI, is implementing an ambitious pilot initiative for the design, supply, installation and commissioning of an integrated land management information system (ILMIS).

Supported by the World Bank (WB), the ministry has engaged the IGN-led consortium to implement the initiative seeking to bring about order and stability in land ownership in the country.

The initiative being implemented at the ministry’s headquarters in Dar es Salaam and being piloted in the Kinondoni and Ubungo municipal councils in the city, will fully integrate land administration, registration and surveying. It will also support the process of transforming land records and maps into digital formats.

It was commenced in July last year and scheduled to run for two years until July 2018 followed by a one-year maintenance period before being up-scaled nationally in the next phase of the project.

The two-year project is coordinated at national level by the office of the Prime Minister under the supervision of senior officer Barney Laseko.

Its objective is to strengthen land tenure security by improving the security and reliability of land transactions with the establishment of an efficient and reliable land information system.

Moreover, ILMIS will provide affordable, secure and reliable land administration services for customers and improve public confidence in land administration services.

According to Mr Laseko, the implementation of ILMIS project comprises different components, including the design and development of ILMIS software, testing and deployment of ILMIS as well as conversion of existing data, including maps, certificate and survey computation files into appropriate digital formats and integration of this data into ILMIS.

Other components include training of staff to operate ILMIS, execution of the public information and awareness campaign (PIAC) to engage members of the general public and key stakeholders and maintenance and support of ILMIS.

“Many activities of the project, launched in July last year, have either been completed or are underway, including a baseline survey for the ILMIS, which was implemented between March and April this year,” he said.

The purpose of the baseline was to capture perceptions of the general public concerning the status of service delivery in land management and administration and the understanding and attitudes of the staff within the ministry and the Kinondoni district land office associated with the ILMIS project.

Analysis of data collected during the survey will help the identification of challenges to service delivery and contribute to effective implementation of the ILMIS. Other activities of the project that have been completed include the refurbishment of the national land information centre (NLIC) building at the ministry’s headquarters in Dar es Salaam. The building is now in use.

It is in this building, where a process to digitise and converge data comprising approximately 18,000 maps and plans along with 320,000 files for Kinondoni and Ubungo districts begun in June of this year. This process involves a careful job of several stages, including restoration, scanning, indexing and geo-referencing.

Initial maps to be digitised are town planning drawings known technically as TP drawings and extracts of TP drawings, which are revised extracts of original plans.

Once these have been completed, the survey plans or cadastral plans that show plot or farm boundaries and beacons will be digitised and incorporated into ILMIS.

Some of the maps, land registration and administration documents held by the ministry are from many years ago and because of that they are very old and have deteriorated with time, according to Minister of Lands, Housing and Settlement Development William Lukuvi.

These documents needed to be restored before they could be digitised and entered into ILMIS.

As one of the beneficiaries, Kinondoni District Commissioner Ally Hapi said having a centralised data system would also help reduce theft and duplication of titles, hence ending land conflicts in municipal council.

Kinondoni is among the districts with many land disputes that have persisted for more than 10 years.

“The system complements our efforts in fighting title deed forgeries. Indeed, it is of great help in our district,” he said.

In March this year, Mr Alain Roger, an expert in restoration processes of documents from the national library in Paris visited the ministry to assess required resources for the restoration process.

He also conducted one-week training for the relevant staff on map and document restoration.

During his visit, Mr Roger recommended the country for the initiative taken to addressing challenges on land ownership, saying the new system would offer the ever lasting solution.

“It is a fantastic effort done by the country and this is being encouraged to encompass the advancement of science and technology in making complicated issues easier,” said the French expert.