According to the audit, the most affected were land parcels allocated to thousands of vulnerable families
Inaccuracies stemming from land regularization carried out 10 years ago and lack of funds to address them are standing in the way of thousands of landholders plans to put their property to profitable use.
For example, scores of landholders cannot access land services as their parcels are still registered with the government, individuals, or were left without ownership information in the registry.
The land authority says the general correction could not happen owing to its high cost, compelling individual landholders to seek the help of private surveyors to initiate the correction process.
“Getting a cadastral plan done itself costs Rwf20,000 in addition to paying transport fees for the person doing the exercise. Then one has to pay Rwf 30,000 for the transfer," said Emmanuel Nshimyumukiza, a resident of Ruhango District in Southern Province.
The latest report of the Auditor General indicated that while 34,984 land titles were submitted for correction as they contain significant errors.
According to the audit, the most affected were land parcels allocated to thousands of vulnerable families but were never facilitated to register the property as theirs.
Another section is made up of land parcels which were in wetland during general boundary land registration. Later on, the land shifted from wetland but landholders were not informed to register the parcels.
Rising disputes
This implies that as the government plans to take over land parcels categorized as without ownership in the land registry, it increases the risk of disputes with landholders.
According to experts, the disputes could derail years of state reforms and investments in property tenure regularisation, land rights and security tenure.
This is in light of evidence that over 1.7 million land titles were not issued to the intended landholders since the time of registration in 2010.
The auditors found that the land titles, which were printed in 2011 and 2012, were still kept at provincial offices of Rwanda Land Management and Use Authority (RLMUA). “Without a formal plan to address this issue, the rights and tenure security cannot be guaranteed,” auditor general Obadiah Biraro says, adding that the affected landholders can’t certify that the land has been allocated or leased to them.
RLMUA officials indicated they had mapped all the Cells where land system errors are more evident, and had embarked on the rectification process, they could not give a timeline owing to the high budget needed to cover the whole country.
RLMUA head Esperance Mukamana, however, did not agree to discuss details of how much it would cost and how they planned to raise the funds.
“These are issues we are committed to address, and have been addressing through our routine campaigns.
Our staff will be deployed to all the areas identified to address the issues once and for all, but we also allow individual landowners with urgency to come to us without waiting,” she said.