Malete Land Board owed P3.5m
Mpho Mokwape | Monday August 1, 2022 06:00
Board chairperson, Oneetse Malope said the money owed to the Board was rental arrears from lease agreements with the business community who have been reluctant to pay.
Addressing the media fraternity on Wednesday, Malope said Ramotswa and surrounding areas are full of businesses that had long been allocated land and there was an agreement for lease.
“As you can see, Ramotswa and its surrounding areas, businesses are everywhere and the owners have been failing to fulfill their promises with the Board,” she said. Malope explained that most of the business owners have failed to develop plots and in the process failed to pay rental for the lease agreement leading to accumulation of debts for the Board.
She pointed out that they have been trying to collect the owed money by first engaging relevant parties through invoices and emails but it has been a tough exercise. “We often do house-to-house campaign trying to remind businesspeople that they have an obligation to pay the Board, which she said has yielded not so satisfactory results as of this year alone we managed to collect just over a little P100,000,” Malope said.
She further said they will soon engage the law noting that they might resort to repossession of property of the parties as a way to settle what was owed to them. On other issues, Malope said the other major issue the Board was faced with was the application of plots from members of the public as the applications stands at 24,250 and the waiting list is from 2015.
“We tried to introduce an application fee of P50 so as to deter many applicants but it has not solved anything because everyday we receive many applications. The situation is also fuelled by that Ramotswa is just close to the city and the majority prefer it,” she said. She said the situation was also made worse by those who are allocated plots in far areas such as Tsabong and they decide to return such to the respective board and wait and hope they will get one near urban areas.
The Board chairperson said it was hard to allocate plots as desired because Ramotswa was surrounded by free hold farms from residents of Balete who are sometimes hard to convince to hand over those farms to the Board.
She emphasised that it has contributed to the extreme shortage of land in Ramotswa as compared to other areas. The Board chairperson said it was important for the public to know that the law has now made it easy for plot owners to have title deeds without going through hustles and spending money.
“The government has made it easier for every Motswana to have a title deed when they get the plot and those who already have plots can go to their respective Boards to get theirs,” she said. Malope explained that the title deeds come in the form of a Secure Land Title (SLT), which was introduced during the new Land Act and that it was meant to reduce land fraud especially from people who normally would defraud unsuspecting individuals by selling one plot to different people.