The cabinet nominee for Lands, Housing and Urban Development Alice Wahome has said the ministry requires not less than Sh40 billion to fully digitise land records in the country.
Wahome made the revelations while appearing before the National Assembly’s Appointments Committee at County Hall for vetting.
Digitisation of land records entails the construction of an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) for managing land title records including scanning, indexing and archiving deed files among other digital operations.
Wahome told the speaker Moses Wetang’ula-chaired vetting panel that Sh40 billion is the amount needed to finalise the automation of lands records which started in 2019.
“I want to be very honest with Parliament because I’m at the right place. We needed a better budget, a bigger budget to the tune of between Sh35 billion and Sh40 billion to be able to secure all our records under the digitization system,” Wahome said.
Wahome was nominated back to the Lands docket which she held before President William Ruto sent packing his entire Cabinet on July 11.
She said if approved by the House and reappointed back to the ministry, it will take at least five years to fully digitize land records in the country.
“Another maybe five years we can safely be able to do this provided we get sufficient budget as a country to cover it,” she said.
The Land digitisation journey started in April 2019 during the tenure of then Lands CS Farida Karoney.
Karoney said then it would take a record 12 days down from 73 days to complete the land registration process once all land records are digitized.
The land registration process involves title deed search, registration of title deed, land rent clearance, clearance of land rates, consent of transfer clearance and requisition of file valuation.
Automation of land records would save land owners lengthy processes witnessed under the manual land records and in the long run, make overall transactions cheaper.
This increased efficiency would also attract investors in real estate, many of whom have been jittery over making investments due to fear of manipulation of the manual land records at The Land Registry by cartels.
