Residents of Gasabo have appealed to concerned authorities to appoint a notary for the district.

In separate interviews with The New Times, several residents said it takes months to have documents such as land titles notified, instead of the five days as was previously.

This paper understands the district has accumulated a backlog of land documents waiting to be notified ever since Thomas Hakizimana, the public notary of land, resigned in January.

Usually, when one wants to transfer ownership of land, they have to submit land titles to the sector offices. The sector sends the documents to the district for notification.

"We send the documents to the district for notification but our district currently lacks a notary, which drags the process,” said Jonas Shema, the coordinator of Jabana Sector.

The district’s attempt to recruit a new notary was halted by the Ministry of Labour in its final stages, according to sources.

When contacted, Gasabo mayor Willy Ndizeye acknowledged the problem but said the district had designed temporally measures for residents seeking notary services.

"When the notary resigned, we had to find alternatives. We decided to turn to Kicukiro and Nyarugenge district notaries to help whenever they can but this takes too long since they already have a lot to deal with in their areas,” he said.

Ndizeye said attempts to recruit a new notary were not successful after the Ministry of Labour asked that the recruitment be stayed until ongoing reforms at the ministry are complete.

Efforts to contact the Ministry of Labour were futile as the minister and permanent secretary’s mobile phones were switched off and had not replied to our emails by press time.

Currently, for anyone in Gasabo to make any land transactions, they have to wait until the notaries from the neighbouring districts have time to verify their documents.

Urgency

Nyarugenge notary Justine Kayiraba told The New Times that Gasabo’s issue is getting out of hand and that "someone needs to act urgently.”

"The process is supposed to take five working days, but this is impossible since we have to serve residents in our area first yet Gasabo is a big area that is still virgin. Many people who want to buy land are going there,” she said.

Kayiraba added that some of the affected people are those seeking mortgage services and others who come in the country to buy land and need to travel back immediately.

Also affected are real estate dealers.

Charles Haba, a real estate developer, said it now takes him almost three months to have full documents for a piece of land in Gasabo.

"It’s just a nightmare, even before the previous notary resigned, Gasabo still had inefficiencies within the notary office,” Haba said.

He said even if a new notary is hired, the backlog in the district is too huge to be cleared in a short time.

District officials say the notary position might be filled before end of the month.