Attendees of a meeting held by the group recently at the University of Botswana (UB) urged the committee members to persevere with intention to petition the minister despite the challenges they are faced with.Publicity Secretary of the group Joe Serema, who addressed the poorly attended meeting, said some of their challenges include lack of resources as well as failure to reach people outside Gaborone and those without access to Facebook. The meeting was convened to update members on the draft petition which will demand that Mokalake make the provision of land and houses a priority for the people of Botswana, particularly the youth.
The demands of the petition are that the minister should make an urgent plan to provide residential plots to address the current application backlog, that the minister should commission a land audit for all types of land in the country - be it tribal, state or freehold land. The group also wants the Land Act to be amended as a matter of urgency, their suggestion being that government should consider imposing a considerable land tax on all unproductive freehold land in excess of 50-hectares.
