THE establishment of an inter-ministerial Taskforce should raise people’s hopes that illegalities in land allocation, which have been rampant country-wide, will soon be a thing of the past. The development, announced on Monday this week by Home Affairs Minister Ngosa Simbyakula, is testimony that there is political will by the authorities to stop the scourge. If effectively executed, the move is likely to also change the negative public perception of councils which, by virtue of being agencies of the Lands Ministry, are believed to be in the forefront of illegal land allocation. It is little wonder, therefore, that the Zambia Land Alliance is among many local organisations and individuals that are solidly behind this initiative, which is intended to bring sanity to land administration. Some councilors are, for instance, said to be in the habit of abandoning their civic responsibilities and have gone a step further, engaging in illegal allocation of land at the expense of serving their communities. And consequences of such inappropriate actions by some civic leaders have been dire: For one thing, they have resulted in land disputes, some of which have ended in the loss of people’s lives. In some instances, people who built their structures, including housing units, without following the right procedure in land allocation have ended up losing hundreds of thousands of Kwacha as their structures have been demolished. Consequently, those who may have already finished building and moved into their houses have seen their families spending nights, and days, in the cold. This is one undesirable inconvenience which even law-enforcers themselves don’t take pride in, and is indeed the most detestable by the affected families. Apart from some ‘unscrupulous’ councillors and council employees, suspected political party cadres have equally been mentioned in illegal land allocation and encroachment, especially in towns and cities, as well as on farmland. Besides these are some individuals masquerading as party cadres who involve themselves in this illegality. Others are just conmen who pose as agents of individual plot vendors. In some cases these have even produced fake papers indicating that they are genuine estate agents. As a result, many Zambians have lost a lot of money to these conmen who, in some cases have sold one plot or piece of land to more than one person. Of course some of these conmen have been arrested and prosecuted while council and Ministry of Lands employees caught up in the scam have ended up either suspended or losing their jobs. However harsh these measures may have been, they have not ended illegalities in land allocation. This last year perhaps prompted former Lands Minister Harry Kalaba to announce that his ministry had come up with various other ways on how best illegal land allocation could be dealt with. According to the then Lands minister, these included the setting up of a Land Audit Tribunal which he said would start its work this year, to be specific in January this year. Mr Kalaba said such a Tribunal would be launched as soon as funds allocated in the national Budget were availed, and that it would be digitalised so that people in far-flung areas did not have to travel to Lusaka. He promised that a joint taskforce to be headed by Home Affairs Deputy Minister Steven Kampyongo would ensure officials tasked to curb illegalities in land allocation gathered enough evidence to warrant the arrest of culprits. Such a taskforce had to include officials from the Ministry of Local Government and Housing, traditional leaders and other stakeholders directly involved in the allocation of land countrywide. Today the Government has fulfilled its promise, because the country is witnessing the birth of an inter-ministerial Taskforce comprising the ministries of Lands, Home Affairs and Local Government and Housing. This Taskforce’s mandate is to deal with law breakers in land allocation and acquisition with a view to nipping the scourges in the bud. We just hope all Zambians will support this initiative.