The President expressed his ire at a Kgotla meeting he addressed in Palapye yesterday. He said landboards frustrate Batswana and the country at large. "We tried in the past to decentralise some powers from the Minister of Lands and Housing to the landboards, but while we encourage Batswana to engage in businesses, delay from the land board defeats all these efforts because landboards keep sending people from pillar to post," he said.
Khama further said he wondered whether landboards were really committed to helping develop the country. He added that concerns regarding landboards were common countrywide. The President said this when showing dissatisfaction with the answer that land board officials gave one of the residents who complained of complex procedures that have hindered his progress since 2009. The complainant told the President that he had applied for a change of land use, from arable farm to a commercial diary farm. He later applied for extension and an officer who attended to him then told him that he would be duly assisted and that he could go ahead and fence the farm. "I was told that the technical officer, who would measure the plot, was still at school. In the meantime the power line was constructed such that it passed through the said plot. Now I am sent from pillar to post when I demand compensation. I have lost all hope because am now told that only the board has (the power) to approve the change of land use, not the officer in her own capacity," he said as he sought presidential intervention.
