Malawi lands minister says corruption puts investors off
Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development Paul Chibingu says corruption, which is rampant in his ministry, has devastating consequences on Malawi’s socio-economic development because it would make Malawi less attractive for foreign investment destination.
Speaking on the sidelines of a senior management team fraud and corruption prevention workshop in Lilongwe on Wednesday, Chibingu said it was disheartening that even foreigners are able to get large pieces of land without following proper procedures.
Said Chibingu: “As government we are very serious that there should be no cases of corruption where one piece of land is allocated to several persons including foreigners with each one of them having a valid deed, duly registered at the Land and Deeds Registry. This is very bad because government loses revenue since the seller and the buyer do not pay taxes and in the long run the country will be less attractive to foreign investors.”
Chibingu called on people who bought land dubiously to report to his ministry so that they can get proper documents, warning that if they are discovered by government agencies they would lose the land for nothing.
“I am very serious with this issue. Some people buy land and yet they do not have the capacity to develop it and in the end sell it to foreigners. If we are not careful we will find all our prime land in the hands of foreigners in 20 years’ time. Is it good that big portions of land in cities are used as chicken kraals? Those keeping chickens should not do that within cities,” said Chibingu.
The minister also urged the department of housing to allocate houses to people using housing allocation committees and departments of buildings to award contracts by utilising the expertise of the procurement committees.
He said his ministry has formed a close partnership with the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) and other stakeholders to fight corruption to make his Ministry corruption free.
Director of investigation at ACB, Dan Mponda, said the graft busting body will work closely with all government ministries as part of the national anti-corruption strategy to reduce corruption in the civil service.
“We are happy that we have started the battle against corruption with the Ministry of Lands but eventually we will reach out to all government ministries. Our job has been made a bit easier following government directive that one percent of each ministry’s budgetary resources should go towards fighting corruption,” said Mponda.
If foreigners are able to penetrate into the GVT and have apiece of land through this ministry .. how porous is of our gvt interms of curruption… ACB is not doing enough.. ACB could have have new strategy to deal with this, ….Malawi is going while we watch.
mungapite maiko ena kukagula malo inu mwa ma dilu?
As I have indicated before I will say it again. The bottom line here is that in the absence of a functioning deeds office and luck of Identity document these issues wont go away. this is the reason why people can sell land which doesn’t even belong to them because our current systems are don’t work. No country can develop without proper systems in place to quantify the country’s challenges and in the absence of the national id that wont be easy. The other issue lies with the inability for the local authority to enforce by laws as that has led to people building properties any how and acquiring land through chiefs