Ministry to formalise unplanned settlements

 

IN order to allow citizen to use their land assets for economic and social development, the government is currently implementing a five year programme aimed at formalising unplanned human settlements.

The unplanned settlement formalisation programme which is executed between 2015 and 2020 focus on making land assets an important collateral that can pull out many poor families from abject poverty. 

 

The Deputy Minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlement Development, Ms Angelina Mabula, said that nearly 70 per cent of Tanzanian population lives in unplanned settlements. She noted that while the government was doing all within its capacity to ensure many people especially in cities and towns live in surveyed plots, the ministry has started to formalise unplanned settlements.

She was responding to a question by Ms Anna Lupembe (Special Seats-CCM) who asked why the government was not eager to formalise unplanned settlements while many Tanzanians are missing out numerous opportunities for lacking important legal documents for their buildings and land plots.

She claimed that there were still unplanned settlements with the number of houses built in their different types and style not properly planned. The MP added that numerous houses sprung up arbitrarily in areas not surveyed, thus demanding to know the government’s plan to help such people.

Ms Mabula said the government has started implementing the first phase of the programme in Kimara and Saranga wards in Dar es Salaam city. The first phase, she said, will include formalising and surveying 6,000 houses/ plots and the exercise will be completed by December, this year.

Ms Mabula told Members of Parliament (MPs) the second phase of the programme will cover 299,000 houses/ plots and will be carried out in all five Dar es Salaam districts -Ubungo, Ilala, Temeke, Kinondoni and Kigamboni.

The Deputy Minister noted further that the ministry in collaboration with Musoma, Tabora, Singida, Kigoma, Sumbawanga and Lindi councils have made valuation for 50,200 houses/plots which are to be formalised in this 2016/20127 financial year.

“ This programme is ongoing and we expect that we will reach all cities and major towns,” she told the House adding the government will also implement a 10-year programme (2015-2025) aimed at planning, surveying and possessing plots of lands to ‘wananchi’.