Minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development, Mr William Lukuvi
THE Minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development, Mr William Lukuvi, has uncovered a bogus landlord of Arab origins involved in three different land scams in Dar es Salaam and Mtwara regions.
The Minister also suspended a Ward
Executive Officer in Lindi Region who masqueraded as an official for the
ministry and took the opportunity to transfer part of a beach to a
company owned by a businessman identified as Ikbar.
Mr Lukuvi disclosed this during an
exercise to resolve land conflicts, which saw him listening to
complaints from Ilala residents in Dar es Salaam. The exercise that
ended yesterday saw the Minister going through 99 complaints on the
first day.
“We have discovered that the bogus
landlord, Omar Mohamed Agil, has been deceiving owners of properties in
the name of partnerships and thereafter forges title deeds he uses to
borrow money from banks,” said Mr Lukuvi.
He noted three different cases of which
two involves properties in Dar es Salaam and another in Mtwara Region.
“Based on this revelation, I have directed my offices not to carry out
any transfer, transaction or mortgage in this person’s name until
further notice,” ordered the Minister.
In one of the incidents, Mr Lukuvi said
the fraudster entered into a partnership with a blind man known as
Mtumwa Shame Zemba, who owns a property at Mtoni and used the title deed
to take a loan at Amana Bank.
“We have known the old man for a while
and have been paying his dues, so I have asked Amana Bank to submit the
title deeds to my office tomorrow (today). If Agil has an outstanding
balance, he should know how to settle it,” he said.
On the other hand Agil changed the title
deeds of a property owned by his uncle and another partner by replacing
the name of his uncle with his. He went on to use a picture of his
house girl purporting it to be of the wife of the other partner to
enable him get a loan from Amana Bank.
Agil is said to have received a loan of 300m/-, without the involvement of the other partner.
The Minister, however, directed the
parties to turn to the courts of law for resolve. Lukuvi (pictured) went
on to reveal that up to 180 title deeds have been revoked in the city
due to rampant fraud, forgery and bribery and returned to their original
owners.
In the course of the exercise, the
Minister said they discovered that the deception has been going on since
the first phase government.
The Minister said the conmen deceive and grab poor people’s properties through the help of public servants.
“These people operate by colluding with
our officials to go through the history of undeveloped land and produce
duplicates of offer letters with backdated information.
Our officials assist them to remove
original offers in the files. In order for their story to look real they
deep the documents in tea for the paper to look older than the original
copy,” revealed Mr Lukuvi.
Mr Lukuvi added that long back the officials used to survey one area three times and sell the properties twice or thrice.
“To date, we have dished out about 700
alternative properties to victims of such malicious acts at reasonable
prices, as compared to the market value in Pemba Mnazi and Kigamboni,”
added the Minister.
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