The National Land Authority(NLA) has registered 1.4 million unclaimed plots of land to government after call to the general public to register all their land properties or else, risk to have them temporarily put under public assets.
According to NLA officials, land property owners were given December 31,2020 deadline to register all the plots of land. When the deadline expired, the process to register the land properties under the government assets started, resulting in 1.4 million unclaimed plots.
Some reasons that led to unregistered land, include the cost of registration which was Rwf 30,000, but this fee was removed a couple of years ago.
“Ever since we registered the land under government, people are now waking up, coming to claim ownership. We have a process to be followed for the land to return to rightful owner,” said Marie Grace Nishimwe, the Director General of NLA.
“The owners start with cell and sector land committees which confirm information. Form there, the land title is processed.”
With the removal of registration fees, Nishimwe finds no reason why anyone would leave their land assets unclaimed.
However, some citizens failed to register their land due to poor understanding of the procedures.
When the initial process of national registration program started, the citizens were given a small receipt, including the number that would inform the coding in the Unique Parcel Identifier(UPI).
That process started in 2009.
“I was given small pieces of papers when land officers came to map my plots and I thought that those stood for land title. Until I was informed that I had to go at sector level to register my land, I never thought that the land did not belong to me officially,” said Jean Bosco Rudasingwa from Huye District.
Meanwhile, the citizens are no longer required to have printed land titles, rather, NLA issues digital titles(E-titles) which include a code that is available in the office of the registry.
NLA has so far registered 11,789,596 parcels.
