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The government is in the process of cleaning all title deeds to ensure they have a corresponding geographical co-ordinate to end fraud in the lands ministry.
President Uhuru Kenyatta said the process will assist the government in stamping out fake title deeds and restore the sanctity of the document as envisioned by the founding fathers.
“For 125 years, our lands registry was manually managed and deliberately messy to engineer and facilitate land theft and corruption,” he pointed out.
Kenyatta pointed out the government with the help of a youth-led team has begun the process of digitizing the land registry.
He spoke during this year’s Mashujaa Day celebration when he led the nation to honour Kenya’s independence heroes at the Wang’uru Stadium in Kirinyaga County.
The Head of State said in his 23-page speech that what surprises the government is what is referred to as title deeds without geographical co-ordinates which are the source of historical fraud in the land sector.
Kenyatta said the government has established the existence of private land titles of roundabouts in major highways to airport runways.
He added this was because titles were issued without reference to geographical co-ordinates or what experts call geo-referencing.
“A major advantage in digitizing our land registry under the system known as “Ardhi Sasa” is that where once it took you a minimum of six months to do a single land transaction it has now been reduced to 48 hours (2 days) in the registries we have digitized,” the President said.
President Kenyatta said where once it took between one and three months to obtain an official land search, the “Ardhi Sasa” system will give you land search results in 3 to 5 minutes.
He pointed out now with digitization they have the platform to ensure that every inch of Kenya “is mapped and all areas eligible for allocation and issuance of titles have an accurate, secure and fraud-free system for issuance.”