New Jinja City land board outlines key priorities

The newly inaugurated Jinja City land board has pointed out key top priorities as they kick off their tenure.

Led by Jamiru Mukama Ssanyu, the board members addressed their maiden press briefing where they revealed a decision to halt Ministry of Lands zonal offices in Jinja from giving out land titles to individuals without the clearance from the City Land Board.

This follows numerous civil suits against Jinja City council over land related matters.

Mukama who was accompanied by some members of the city land board including  Alex Luganda also the Minister of Constitutional affairs Busoga Kingdom, Barbara Munyaruguru, Muhammad Katuntubiru, Emmanuel Kamugisha and the board secretary Abubaker Kirunda, revealed that they held a meeting with MZO officials where it was a greed that MZO should stop processing land titles without clearance from the new City land board.

"We resolved that MZO should not process any transactions dealing with anything to do with leases in Jinja City regardless of the date, whether it is for 1998 or 1999 as long as it is still pending," Mukama said

He said  the move is intended to pave the way for an audit into all the registered complaints related to double allocations and erroneous transactions.

Jinja City Council is grappling with more than 100 civil suits, others arising from the defunct Jinja District Land Board, who issued leases on land in the city arbitrarily.

"We have received close to 20 complaints from lawyers and individuals who allegedly were cleared by the defunct defunct district land board which is masquerading as a land board to transact land business," said Alex Luganda .

He observed that there has been no functional  land board in Jinja City between 2021 to February 2024 but some land transactions have been taking place.

"I encourage members of the public who dealt with Jinja District land board and were given land titles between 2021 to February 15 2024 to come over to City Hall and re-verify with new the city board." Luganda said

Jinja City land board was constituted on February, 15  and sworn into office on  March,7  2024

According to the 1998 Uganda Land Act, land boards are responsible for holding and allocating land in districts/ cities.