Land buyers set to enjoy hassle-free land transactions

Files at the Central Registry in the Ministry of Land. There is a case in Nairobi that will certainly open the Pandora’s Box and by the time it is dispensed with in the next few months, we shall have an idea of how corruption networks in the Land Registry works. PHOTO | MARTIN MUKANGU | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The biggest target in the ministry’s plan is land search.

  • It is often a cumbersome process that has in the past required one to present themselves to the registry.

  • Dr Muraguri estimates, the ministry will do away with over 80 per cent of traffic at the registries.

Life might never be the same again for land buyers and sellers after the ministry is done with the scanning of 30,000 files and the validation of 369,000 others that have already been digitised.

The ministry has promised smooth, secure and hassle-free land transactions after the process that will culminate in the opening up of the digital registries on April 3.

“Upon resumption of services on April 3, 2018, there will be no more manual processing of documents,” Land Principal Secretary Nicholas Muraguri said in a statement while announcing the closure of the registries in Nairobi for 10 days.

LAND SEARCH

The biggest target in the ministry’s plan is land search – the often cumbersome process that has in the past required one to present themselves to the registry, queue from one office to another, and wait for days for the results.

In the new system, one will need to create an eCitizen account, where one will enter the land parcel number and the results will be instantaneous.

If you are searching someone else’s land, that person will automatically get a short text message alert that their land has been searched online.

With this, Dr Muraguri estimates, the ministry will do away with over 80 per cent of traffic at the registries.

PAYMENTS

“On payments, we will give you one invoice so that you do not need to go from one office to another making piecemeal payments. The invoice shows the office to which the money should be shared,” Dr Muraguri said of the new system during an interview on Citizen TV.

The 10-day period within which the ministry has closed its Nairobi offices will give an avenue to validate the 369,000 land files that have been scanned and digitised since 2014, and the scanning of 30,000 others that have not been moved from the physical file to the computer.

Besides land searches, other services that will be available online are transfer of ownership or lease, issuance of consent and valuation requests.

Users will also be able to pay land rents and be issued with clearance certificates online, make all other payments including stamp duty, registration fees, and consent fees electronically and receive digital receipts and notifications of payments.

“We want to make sure that the way people can apply and renew driving licences online and very easily, will be the same way they will deal with land transactions,” Ms Esther Ogege, the acting Lands secretary, told the Nation at Ardhi House Monday.