Yesterday, the Minister for Lands, Housing, and Urban Development, Hon. Judith Nabakooba revealed that the Ministry intends to establish a digitalized system to aid people to apply for and acquire land titles online.
While launching the Land Awareness Week on 22nd August 2022, Nabakooba said the move is to reduce fraud and forgery consuming the land business in Uganda.
In a phone interview with James Onen on RX Radio, the Ministry of Lands and Urban Development spokesperson Dennis Obbo revealed that many Ugandans have become dishonest about everything, forging not only documents but also products and the same has hit the lands sector.
“Fraud and forgery has reached an extent where it has become too complex to detect, and we have decided to go scientific as a solution to the frequent fraud,” he said
He explained that whereas the Ministry holds all the original land title documents and people bear the duplicate copies, many fraudsters forge these copies and tamper with almost everything, including signatures and barcodes.
“At least the technology we have can read our barcodes and cannot read the barcodes made by fraudsters which makes us steps ahead of them,” he stated.
He added that the Registration of Titles Act Section 1 and the Land Regulations Section 66 allow the Office of Commission and Land Registration to modify forms to suit the needs of particular cases and circumstances, altering the processes due to the ever-increasing fraud.
The applications for land titles will therefore be digitalized to have the original data of the land owners captured to enable the generation of electronic documentation with unique barcodes and NIN numbers.
Once the duplicate copy is proven to be legitimate, the new technology will update the information.
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