The Ministry of Lands and Mineral Resources has set a goal to improve their customer service this year, which has been a major obstacle to their service in the past.
Minister for Lands and Mineral Resources Hon. Mereseini Vuniwaqa said they were facing quite a number of challenges.
“A major challenge is the delay in service delivery to our customers. This is attributed to out-dated laws, policies, unclear Standard Operation Procedures, staff capacity and bureaucracy,” Mrs Vuniwaqa said.
“For 2015, to improve our service delivery, we will revise our respective laws and policies, improve our Standard Operation Procedures on all our core functions such as land administration, valuation, surveying, mining and geospatial management information.”
The Minister plans to undertake Phase 2 of the organization restructure and strengthen capacity building for staff at various levels.Meanwhile, from October last year the Ministry has collected $2,417,437.30; an average of $1.2 million per month from arrears of leases.
She said this is the direct result of the following measures which will continue this year:
- Establishment of a specific taskforce;
- Awareness through TV advertisement for payment of lease arrears;
- Direct follow ups with customers with high arrears;
DEPTFO