Minister Atubo, MPs clash over Land Bill

Feb 28, 2008

MPs yesterday said cushioning tenants against evictions would make it difficult for owners to use land titles as security in financial institutions.

By Henry Mukasa
and Barbara Among

MPs yesterday said cushioning tenants against evictions would make it difficult for owners to use land titles as security in financial institutions.

The legislators, who were scrutinising the proposed Land Bill, said limiting evictions to only non-payment of rent would make banks and loan shacks shy away from such plots.

“The banks will not be able to recapture the land if someone fails to pay their money.

“With this amendment, nobody will access funding. It is anti-development,” Owor Amooti Otada (NRM) said.

The lands minister, Omara Atubo, who was appearing before the legal and parliamentary affairs and that of physical infrastructure committees, said if the banks could not take over the land, then the Bill would be serving its purpose.
“That is what the law seeks - to stay evictions,” Atubo answered.

The minister said cautious banks send their loan officers to visit the land staked as security to see occupants and interests on land.

Atubo also flexed legal muscles with fellow lawyers on the deprivation of property barred by the Constitution and the protection of tenants equally.
Abdu Katuntu (FDC) contested the granting of equal rights to tenants and occupants as the registered land owners. He said what the Bill termed as “occupancy” was not equal to “property ownership.”

Katuntu said it instead equals to deprivation of landlords property, which is against Article 26 of the Constitution that safeguards their right to possess the land.

Atubo conceded that tenants could not have equal ownership interests like the registered owner but insisted that the relationship was not ordinary.

The minister said the Government would consider all the proposals made so far, saying he would return to the Cabinet and table them.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});