No more land to offer landless Zimbabweans: Prof Jiri

LIVINGSTONE MARUFU

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water, and Rural Development, Professor Obert Jiri, has revealed that around 99% of the land has already been redistributed, and there is no more land available to provide landless Zimbabweans.

He said the demand for land was huge.

“The demand for land is huge as everyone in the country has seen the value of producing on your own piece of land. Despite having close to 300 000 people on the waiting list,the land does not expand,” Prof Jiri said.

He added: “We feel for the young people and others who need land but  we have programmes that can help them to access   land.

“The first port of call is for them to apply through their provinces and districts.

“They may go into the joint venture programmes that we are rolling out are very key for the young people to  come into that space.

“We have the biggest wheat and maize producers who are young people who have entered joint venture programmes with established farmers.

“Joint venture programmes are the way to go as we have seen production and productivity jumping.”

He stated that in order to confirm the precise number of applications and to find out if they are still alive and still desire the land, the ministry was updating the list.

It is anticipated that the exercise will be finished this month.

Mashonaland West topped the list with 70 653 people while Matabeleland North had the least at 8 873.

According to land allocation procedures, the minister has set in place land committees at district and provincial levels to assist him in recommending land allocations.

The members of the land committees are the District Development Coordinator who is the chair of the District Land Committee (DLC), the District Coordinating Committee chairperson who is the vice-chair of the DLC, District War Veterans, District JOC members (security arms of Government), District Land Officer who is the chief advisor and secretariat of DLC, Rural District Council Chairperson, District heads of; Rida, Agritex, Women Affairs, Youth, EMA and all traditional chiefs in the district.

He said those stakeholders were replicated at the provincial level, with the Minister of State for Provincial Affairs and Devolution chairing the Provincial Lands Committee (PLC).