By Mulengera Reporters At a cost of roughly Shs6bn, the GoU through the Ministry of Lands will this new Financial Year commence on a very comprehensive process to identify, survey, title and document all public land. According to Counsel Andrew Nyumba the Secretary for Uganda Land Commission (ULC), which is charged with safeguarding all public land in Uganda, this will be done under the Public Land Inventory. See recorded video version of the story via this YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JARZbN2vj_I&t=31s&pp=0gcJCUwLAYcqIYzv. Aimed at shielding such land against illegal encroachment by false claimants and land grabbers throughout the rapidly-urbanizing Uganda, the PLI program will be implemented in close collaboration with staff at the Lands Ministry’s regional 22 Zonal Offices (MZOs), the local governments and the District Land Boards that are resident in them. Gratefully, each of Uganda’s administrative units has a land committee whose members too will be utilized by the ULC in carrying out this exercise. Nyumba, who was part of the delegation that was led by Lands State Minister Harriet Ntabaazi, told reporters at Uganda Media Center during a Friday media engagement that its estimated that 23% of Uganda’s slightly more than 240,000 square miles of land is comprised of public land; the remaining 77% being land that is privately owned by non-state actors. It was explained that at the end of the PLI-setting up exercise, the exact size of public land will be established with certainty. It’s possible it could be slightly more or slightly less than the 23% that is being estimated in the Ministry records. It was not explained why Uganda, a country which has been an independent nation for more than 60 years, has never compiled an inventory disclosing the actual size of public land. Minister Ntabaazi called on all key stakeholders (such as the religious organizations, cultural institutions, CSOs and people owning land adjacent to government’s public land) to embrace the public land inventory compilation exercise. She said this is the only way public land can be identified and integrated into planning and execution of large public infrastructure projects. She promised to ensure that the exercise is as consultative and participatory as possible. She asserted that the execution of such public projects will become cheaper and more affordable for the GoU to roll out through overcoming speculators who have been in the habit of grabbing government land and going on to leverage on it to claim billions in compensation, while holding themselves out to be genuine project affected persons, whereas not. She said that planning and executing public infrastructure projects such as industrial parks will be easier once all public land is known and identified and its quantity determined. She said that current leaders have a duty to preserve land for posterity purposes and that can only be done if the government knows the extent of public land which belongs to it. Ntabaazi called on those who had fraudulently encroached on public land to vacate and go away before it’s too late. It was clarified that those who forfeit the same and vacate won’t be prosecuted, unlike those who attempt clinging on through fraudulent means. That those who were innocently misled by the District Land Boards which facilitated them to convert public land from leases to freehold will equally be spared and facilitated to revert the same to leasehold terms. But those who used fraudulent means and knowingly took possession of government land will be subjected to the law. It was clarified that what is coming won’t be compulsory land acquisition, displacement of persons or even repossession of land by government but a well-intentioned program aimed at enabling GoU establish the actual extent of public land it owns in the whole country. It was also clarified that none of those found to have encroached and settled on public land comprised of protected areas like wetlands or even forests will be spared. Those will have to be forced out and potentially prosecuted. It’s not going to be compulsory land acquisition by government but an inclusive and consultative exercise requiring all stakeholders to cooperate to enable the government identify, value and document its public land. Maximum transparency was promised. Besides protected areas, public land comprises of land belonging to institutions like government-owned schools, hospitals, security agencies etc. John Fischer Kasenge, who is a Commissioner at ULC who represented his Board Chairman, explained about the fate of all bonafide occupants as provided for under the Constitution and the land Act of 1998. It refers to people who settled, lived, grazed or cultivated on the land as early as 1983 and before. There will be dialogue and a different arrangement in cases involving such people as the PLI exercise gets rolled out. Kasenge explained that where the DLBs erroneously granted freehold titles on public land, the same will be cancelled and replaced with lease hold. It was revealed the exercise will also result leverage digitization of land management records, which gratefully the Ministry of Lands had already started on years ago. Kasenge, a former Kawempe North politician from the NRM, said that as someone who has been part of the lands sector for the last nine years he is optimistic all will go and end well for the good of all stakeholders. Nyumba explained the work will involve different relevant government MDAs coming together by nominating representatives to the PLI-implementation taskforce which is already being constituted. It was revealed by the ULC Secretary that for this FY, Shs6bn had been budgeted and made available to start on the work. The funding is 100% GoU’s, no external donors as yet. Nyumba explained that they will be relying on the relevant land management/administration staff like surveyors etc who are already working for the GoU at the Lands Ministry headquarters in Kampala, the 22 MZOs and district-based local governments. He clarified that because they have all the requisite staff in place, the same job would be done and delivered at 100% completion even within one year if they had the necessary financial resources to facilitate the work. Pushed by journalists, Counsel Andrew Nyumba estimated that if they had like Shs100bn readily available to them (which isn’t the case and will most likely never be), they could do and finish the job within one FY. Crucially, the ULC Secretary explained with the Shs6bn they have, priority will be on going out to identify, surveying, valuing and documenting public land in the cities and other urban areas of Uganda because that is where public land is more susceptible and vulnerable to encroachment and being grabbed because of the growing population and high values. He said the exercise will subsequently extend to remoter parts of Uganda in rural areas but ultimately in the end the whole country will have to be covered. But even with clear funding challenges, Counsel Nyumba estimated that the exercise will reach 100% completion within the period of the next five years of President’s Museveni’s current term of government which comes to an end in 2031.Minister Ntabaazi maintained that every Ugandan citizen has a duty to collaborate with PLI taskforce members to ensure that every inch of public land in Uganda is identified, surveyed and documented because all of us living in the country have interest in the posterity. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).