At least 120 land officers at the sector level were on Wednesday given motorcycles worth a total of Rwf330 million, which will help them serve citizens better, especially those in remote areas.

The motorcycles were provided with support from United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DfID), through a project, Land Tenure Regularization Support.

The project aims at ensuring provision of quick and efficient land services such as land surveying, notification of sale agreements, registering transfers, and monitoring land use, directly to the people who need them.

Speaking at the hand over, Seraphine Mukamana, the Director General of Rwanda Land Management and Use Authority, urged the land officers to properly use the facilitation to improve land-related service delivery.

She said, "Since Sector Land Managers are now well equipped in terms of transport, we expect them to deliver services to public satisfaction in terms of registering all the unregistered land transactions and ensure that informal land transactions are eliminated completely. This will help safeguard the integrity of the land information system by keeping it updated.”

For its first phase, the programme started providing the motorcycles to sector land managers who work with communities residing in the remotest areas.

However, the plan is to ensure that land officers in all the sectors are facilitated within the next six years.

Sarah Metcalf, the Head of DfID in Rwanda, encouraged the beneficiaries to use them properly, making sure that improved land administration services.

"With improved access and mobility, we can ensure that no one is left behind in securing their access to land rights,” she said.

The UK is strongly committed to supporting Rwanda’s economic growth and poverty reduction goals and has been a major partner in implementing land reforms in Rwanda since 2002.

Assinath Hanganimana, the land manager at Bumbogo Sector in Gasabo District, said the motorcycles will help deliver timely land related services to the communities without any more pending queries in their office shelves.

"We would struggle to submit land files to the district offices and sharing the sector’s vehicle with other sector employees was making our work difficult, but now that we have a motorcycle, things are going to be quick and services are going to quickly delivered to the community” she said after getting her motorcycle.

Through the programme, DfID has made about 60% of the total investments (£ 52.4 million) towards the land sector since 2009.

This has helped to demarcate and register 11.4 million land titles, out of which 8 million titles have been issued.

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