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Planning, often from a Regional Planning Authority. While the wording of the circular suggests that
there are likely to be predemarcated stands to be allocated, this is often not the case.
In all the above situations, a sketch map is the basis for a 14-year lease. If a 99-year lease is
desired, the applicant must apply for a survey by the Survey Department of the MOL, either from
Lusaka or a provincial office, or from a private surveyor (see section VII below). The former is more
expensive, the latter involves long delays. The ministry's charge is K40,000/day, including both
fieldwork and office work, plus expenses such as transportation, accommodation, and food as may
be necessary. It is not possible to give a specific figure for these costs, which tend to be negotiated
on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, some elements are provided directly by the applicant, for instance,
use of a vehicle. (See figure 2.2 for a list of ministry fees.)
The process up to this point will have taken several months, sometimes years, since the
process involves convincing local people of one's serious intentions to develop the land.
At the council, a K2,000 fee for paper is charged. The application is first considered by the
Plans, Works and Development Committee, a subcommittee of the council. The committee will
interview the applicant and may visit the parcel, especially if none of the councilors is familiar with
the location. This committee will make its recommendation to the full council, which must give final
approval. The full council may meet only every three or four months, partly because this time frame
is so stipulated in Council Standing Orders, and partly because of the costs of bringing councilors
from different parts of the district. The result is considerable delays in application approvals. A
council may, if it chooses to do so, meet on special issues or hold extraordinary sessions.
The council then forwards the application to the ministry's provincial office or the ministry's
headquarters in Lusaka. The provincial office lands officer is not actually in the line of authority for
land allocation, and if it receives an application from council, it can only inspect the paperwork to
make sure that it is in order then pass it on to the Lands Department in Lusaka. For settlements, the
paperwork goes through the provincial agricultural officer.
The applications normally travel by mail, which is regarded as reliable and reasonably prompt.
When the office concerned has no stamps, the application may wait to be hand-carried by an official
travelling to Lusaka. On arrival in the Lands Department, it goes to the Registry, which gives the
application a temporary number and sends it to the relevant regional office in the Lands Department.
Within the Lands Department in Lusaka, the work is divided into a Northern region (Eastern,
Western, Copperbelt, and North-Western provinces, and part of Lusaka province) and a Southern
region (Southern, Central, Luapula, and Northern provinces, and part of Lusaka province).
The regional officer reviews the file to determine if everything is in order. Roughly one in
ten is returned to the district because of problems with paperwork. If there is no such problem, the
regional office sends the file through the Registry to the Land Department's Folio Section (the Map
Room). All files moving between offices in the ministry move through the Registry, primarily to
ensure that the location of a file can be determined at any time, but also, since records are
computerized, to allow the relevant acts to be recorded in the computer file at the Registry. In the
Folio Section, the map accompanying the application is plotted onto a master map on which all other
leased parcels are shown to make sure the parcel is available and that there are no overlaps with
existing parcels. This process in the Lands Department takes about one week.