Land disputes that take long will soon be a thing of the past, as the Land Tribunal introduces new regulations as from April this year scaling down the time a court decision is reached from two years to six months.
President of the Land tribunal Sampa Kaisara disclosed this week in Francistown during a stakeholders’ engagement workshop.
“The new regulations will inspire and enhance public confidence in the Land Tribunal as a court of justice, equity, affordable, flexible and accessible to all. This is a specialised court which deals with land adjudication, predominantly dealing with appeals from the land boards. With these new regulations, we are introducing tariffs which are very nominal, in order for every common Motswana can afford to have their case tried,” continued Chief President Land Tribunal.
“The Tribunal’s mandate has also been extended to cover issues of land compensation and planning. As much as these regulations are a welcomed development, there will be challenges such capacity building of our staff, resourcing in terms of extra budget and collaboration with our stakeholders in order to achieve optimum efficiency. This is an important milestone”, continued Kaisara.
Other development which the new regulations will bring into effect, is electronic filing. A service which attorneys and clients of the Tribunal have long advocated for.
“This will ease processes and save time for attorneys and clients of our court. They will be able file from their offices and from where they are. This electronic filling service will be operational very soon; we need to attend to certain logistics. The portal, formats and forms are already in place,” highlighted the President Land Tribunal.
President Land Tribunal Francistown, Bannister Mokakangwe said the input from the stakeholders enriched the regulations and would improve the operations and proceedings of this specialized court.
“It will improve the time lines, ability to meet litigants before the main case and have judicial case management. In that way really our efforts to have the Land Tribunal as a court function better and operate at a higher level has been realized,” commented Mokakangwe.
“We are developing data management tools which will help a lot in giving out the e services. Prior to these regulations there were challenges and time taken to resolve disputes was too much. Time is of essence in any type of litigation. Once a matter drags it means it is justice is being delayed,” she said.
“However, Land Tribunal has given itself a timeline of six months to resolve cases.”
