Private sector can play pivotal role in land administration problems

It was reported by some media that the authorities in the city of Dodoma have banned private surveyors from operating in the metropolis. The argument for the ban was that the City has acquired new equipment and was now able to provide the required services. As such the services of the private sector were no longer required. The authority also implied that there were problems in the areas where these private services were given.

To begin with, such a ban, may be ultra vires. Except possibly for national security reasons, I cannot see that an authority has powers to ban service providers from operating in the area of their jurisdiction.

This is a demonstration of the uneasy relationships that flares up now and then between those providing services related to land issues and the public sector.

The situation is acute in areas of land surveying, land use planning and aspects of land valuation and taxation.

Way back in 2005, during the preparation of the Strategic Plan for the Implementation of Land Laws (SPILL), there was a call that the private sector should be taken on board considering that it is only tangentially mentioned in the National Land Policy 1995 where a quotation has it that: “the private surveyors are involved to a very small extent in cadastral surveying because they lack physical and financial resources”.

Not mentioning the private sector in the National Land Policy 1995 is because key activities of land administration have long been in the hands of the public sector.

Land administration, that is, land surveying, land registration, land use planning, land transfers, land valuation and taxation and land information systems, have traditionally been implemented by either the Ministry of Lands or Local Authorities.

The situation has changed drastically, and today, there many private firms that offer services in those areas traditionally dominated by the public sector.

Professional registration and regulatory bodies are in place. The private sector, wanting to provide the badly needed services, has been looking for angles in which it can improve land sector delivery.

Possibly a decade and half or so ago, a professional land use planner pioneered a land pooling and redistribution scheme in one urban area in the country.

He noted that the urban area in question lacked planned land, and that the modus operandi of the public sector, that is, acquisition, clearance, planning, surveying and allocating, was too slow to deal with the rapid land subdivisions that were taking place at the towns’ periphery, resulting into unplanned development. He negotiated with land owners and convinced them to pool their land, have it planned and surveyed and each would bet back 60 percent of their land in terms of surveyed plots.

They were free to sell, if they wanted. The rest, 40 percent, went into roads and public spaces, and some plots were retained by the company, for selling and recouping its costs involved, including the institution of roads.

The scheme worked well, but the public sector had questions. The pioneering land use planning entrepreneur engaged himself full time in such schemes despite the doubts expressed. Many such schemes have been undertaken by other firms, greatly easing pressure on the availability of planned land.

Land surveyors, working with land use planners and noting that most urban land owners were in unplanned areas which could do with regularisation, hatched schemes, working with local authorities, to improve conditions in these areas, leading to owners getting residential licences or certificates of title.

These firms have been received with doubt. They were required to seek registration and approval from the Ministry of Lands, which, moreover, regulated the fees they were charging. This, in some cases, made it difficult for some of these firms to complete their assignments.

In the case of land pooling schemes, Ministerial officials argued that landowners were getting a raw deal, much as there were no complaints from them, as would be the case had land to be compulsorily acquired.

Clearly, the relationships between private land administration firms and the public sector needs to be improved. With some 70 percent of urban land being unplanned and unsurveyed, with 1,000,000 certificates of title registered, there is a lot to be done. The public sector should be calling upon the private sector to come to the rescue.

The two can work side by side to improve efficiency in land delivery, and this should create a win-win situation for the public sector, for the private sector and for the general public.