Maverick lands state minister Dr Sam Mayanja has exclusively revealed to this investigative website that very soon, he is going to have a meeting with President Museveni to discuss his proposal where he wants the Uganda army to take over the role of supervising land surveying in the country.
Mayanja insist that one of the causes of land fraud and mismanagement are private surveyors who connive with Ministry of Lands officials to grab peoples land through issuing multiple land titles on the same piece of land which event is leading to blood shed in some areas.
He said that he has already finished working on a paper which he started on a few years back together with the former head of land information system programme late Grace Kagoro who abruptly died in 2023.
Mayanja boasted that they made rich research to support their proposal
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“Every person on earth is fighting for land. That’s why Palestine is fighting with Israel. Even here in Uganda, I’m always asked to intervene and solve people fighting over land. So, you cannot leave such a sensitive issue in the hands of people who don’t work on command. Land is part of people’s private security which needs to be protected by government,” Mayanja said.
He explained that in his proposal, he wants the army to be in the control of keeping people’s land titles and other particulars concerning their land and if any grievances arise resulting from land boundaries, they will be resolved by the army not private surveyors.
Mayanja also wants to propose that any person who wants to practice land surveying in Uganda should join the army and be registered as army officer.
Mayanja also wants the Office of the Commissioner Land titles Registration, the office of Uganda land Commission, office of Uganda land fund and other land agencies be disbanded just like Justice Catherine Bamugemereire’s land probe recommended and a land bureau set up to manage land issues in the country as it is on collecting taxes which is managed by Uganda Revenue Authority.
Mayanja also proposes that a mechanism should be put in place on how staff in the established land bureau should be recruited and this should beon merit, not recruiting big government officials girlfriends, boyfriends, children’s and relatives who are incompetent because this is currently the leading cause of fraud, corruption and abuse of office in the Ministry of Lands.
Mayanja further welcomed the ongoing investigations into the office of the commissioner land registration which resulted in interdiction of the Commissioner land registration and criminal prosecution of other staff insisting that the ministry is full of corrupt and incompact staff and the entire system needs overhaul.
Mayanja wants staff in the Ministry of Lands to be transferred and reshuffled regularly instead of allowing them to work in one station from the date a person enters the ministry until he retires.
He states that this is the reason why there is a lot of corruption and abuse of office in the ministry.
