By: Precious Miracle Kargbo
Recalling the issues arising from Land disputes and other actions from the past, Dr Turad Senesie, Minister of Lands, Housing and Country Planning on Tuesday 26th September 2023 in an interview maintained that the Ministry of Lands has improved immensely in raising revenue for the government to support social services in the country.
The Minister affirms that before now there have a lot of complaints and issues on Land disputes all over the country and even in the ministry, but the Minister affirms that they have worked to meet the demands of the public by making sure that there is sanity, tranquility and quietness in the Land sector which they have achieved to a large extent.
Dr Turad also said “since 2018 the Ministry has moved from six hundred and one million Leones in revenue generation to 38.9 billion Leones in 2023, which shows that we have made tremendous improvement over the past years”.
Furthermore, Dr Senesie highlights that strategies have been put in place in order to get every citizen to work in the right direction of the Ministry and this have made the ministry to conduct a lot of orientation and training to the public so that they will understand the vision of the ministry.
For staffs in the Ministry, the Minister also ascertains that fiscal disciplines have been conducted for staff in order for them to be able to execute their functions to the public in a well efficient manner. He continues that some other revenues streams that have not been opened have now been opened and they are all working well to be able to generate more revenue for them such as commercial regularization, service plots and direct sales to members of the public as before now what was present is just survey bills, lease, rents, free hold etc.
Additionally, the Minister identifies challenges that the ministry is facing such as building permits, which he includes that is not over 10 percent that they have collected in the few years that he resumed office. He said the main reason that the ministry has generated a lot of revenue is because of the limitation of human contact, as license surveyors cannot move with documents now from one place to another as they can now easily transfer their documents electronically by using the digitalized app responsible for all relevant documents.
Dr Senesie furthers that through his leadership he has managed to digitalized every department of the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Planning, that customers don’t need to take the constraints of going to the Ministry for payments of Land Permits and other things as they can now easily be paid electronically by using the ordinary mobile phones to pay directly. He admonishes that every citizen that intends to put up buildings in any community needs to obtain a license from the ministry, as this is to ensure that these structures don’t tamper with the community structure and reduce some of the dangers that will happen in the future.
The Minister assures that cooperation with the public to obtain license for buildings in different parts of the country has been a real challenge but the Minister clears that the Ministry is working tirelessly to raise up more bodies that will engage the facilitation of license payment which will see fines levied on any person that will try to construct buildings without permits.
Meanwhile, Dr Turad confirms that the Ministry of Housing and Planning is the only institution with the right to ensure that all houses which are built along the right of way in specific communities do not disturb other members of the community, as the ministry will always intervene in those situations to provide tranquility.