THE MINISTER OF JUSTICE, LEGAL AND PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS (HON. ZIYAMBI. ZIYAMBI): Thank you Mr. Speaker Sir. Indeed, the Minister of Local Government has explained the policy thrust of Government to ensure that we issue title deeds to everyone in the urban areas and move to farms. More specifically, in urban areas, Epworth was a pilot so that we appreciate the process, then we would decentralise to other areas. When we started, we were very excited, we thought it was easy but giving a title, it is a document that confers rights to the exclusion of everyone else. Hence, we had to be thorough.
What the Minister of Local Government was saying is, we needed to ensure that we do all the processes. I will give an example of Epworth, there are people who are there. So, you needed people to go on the ground, to physically identify the occupants and match them with what Epworth Local Authority has in their records, then you process all the other processes so that at the end of the day we have a title deed that speaks to the actual person who is supposed to be there. So, indeed, we started with a pilot, now we know what is required of us, we are going to
decentralise.
Very soon you will see us putting offices in high density areas, in several locations, inviting people so that we can get information about them, then we will start processing it.
However, it is not a straight forward issue that you could say we can rush it and do it in no time. I am sure you heard the Minister of Local Government appealing to local authorities not to manipulate the system because we want the actual beneficiaries to benefit. I thank you.
