Govt repossesses 1.3m unclaimed plots of land

A total of 1,315,890 plots of land from across the country have been temporarily registered to the Government, after their owners failed to meet the December 2021 deadline of registration of all plots of land in the country. Speaking to The New Times, Grace Nishimwe, the Head of Land Administration Department at Rwanda Land Management and Use Authority said that any unregistered land in the country falls under this category. “In most cases this land belongs to people who are outside the country, or people who could not get the land titles in time due to Covid-19, or others who are still in court sorting out issues around their land titles,” she said. Nishimwe added that they had started the land registration process from 2009 to 2013, which was a systematic consensus by registering plot by plot in the country, to know who the owners were, and also issue land titles to those who had sold them. “Now (until December) we were registering land for anyone whom we did not register during the previous exercise or any land which had transferred ownership,” she added. The deadline for the exercise was December 31st 2021, and according to statistics from the Authority, 11,578,462 plots of land have been registered and 841, 257 of these are owned by Government, on top of those that unclaimed. How to reclaim your land “For anyone who missed the registration, they can go to the cells in which the land is located where we have a committee in charge of land and they will be assisted,” Nishimwe said. She added that these committees in charge of land at the cell level, have all the appropriate information about any particular piece of land in that region and would assist anyone who would want to claim it. “So if any individual can prove to that cell committee that the plot of land in question is theirs then they will have no problem getting the land title of that plot” she added. According to the Authority, land titles are expected to go digital in the next three years, where once the system goes digital, both buyer and seller will use Irembo services to pay a transaction fee and given forms to fill out, after signing, the file will be electronically sent to the land registry for record-keeping. And finally after the transfer, the buyer will get a notification and get the land title in electronic format.

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Govt repossesses 1.3m unclaimed plots of land