Karoney bows to pressure, unlocks land deals worth billions
Lands CS Farida Karoney, CAS Gideon Mung'aro and Prof Mutahi Ngunyi look on as Stella Chemutai a data Clerk officer takes them through a session during a tour of the Central Registry at Ardhi House.
What you need to know:
- The deal followed a crisis meeting after the LSK threatened to stage a demonstration over transaction delays on Ardhisasa.
- The Kenya Bankers Association earlier this year said the hiccups have put on hold transactions worth Sh102 billion.
The Lands ministry, pressured by protests over delays on its digital land registration system, has activated searches for 100,000 properties, unlocking transactions worth billions of shillings.
In a deal signed with the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) and the Institute of Surveyors of Kenya (ISK) on Tuesday, Lands Cabinet Secretary Farida Karoney said search results for the 100,000 land assets will be available immediately while feedback on another 74,000 parcels would be provided within 14 days once they are fully authenticated.
“The Ministry will activate the application for searches on Ardhisasa. For the 100,000 verified properties, searches will be issued immediately. For the 74,000 that are still undergoing the process of validation, applicants will get a prompt on the reasons for the rejection within 14 days,” read a pact signed by the Ms Karoney, LSK President Erick Theuri, and his ISK counterpart Abraham Samoei.
The deal followed a crisis meeting after the lawyers’ lobby threatened to stage a demonstration on Wednesday over transaction delays on the National Lands Management Information System commonly known as Ardhisasa.
The system is supposed to streamline land transactions.
Information relating to survey, physical planning, land administration, registration, valuation, adjudication, and settlement is supposed to be obtained and processed digitally.
Sluggish processing
Users including bankers, lawyers, and surveyors however decried sluggish processing of property search results on the platform.
The Kenya Bankers Association earlier this year said the hiccups have put on hold transactions worth Sh102 billion, while the LSK Nairobi branch said last year that multibillion-shilling land transactions had stalled.
The ministry however insists that the process has been slow due to the rigours involved in cleaning up land data and cautions taken not to transfer weaknesses of the old land records.
The ministry also says land owners on most of the properties that have been verified and uploaded on the platform are yet to register and list the properties- a key step to unlocking the properties to be transactional.
“The meeting acknowledged the achievements in the digitisation of land records, conversion, and implementation of the Sectional Properties Act, 2020. This has been a rigorous process involving data cleaning, coding, and scanning of records,” Ms Karoney, Mr Theuri, and Mr Samoei said in a communique following the Tuesday meeting.
Data from the ministry shows that, between April 2021 and April 2022, a total of 510,945 Kenyans visited the platform, and 46,746 users registered, including professionals such as advocates, surveyors, and bankers who deal with land transactions daily.
A total of 86 charges, 34 transfers, 26 sale of plans transactions, and 54,804 land rent payments have been completed through Ardhisasa over the past year, the data shows.
