By Innocent Chamtulo

Mulanje, September 24, Mana: Ministry of Lands on Tuesday engaged police officers from the South-West Region on the amended laws and Land Information Management Systems (LIMS) in Mulanje as one way of equipping them with knowledge in land case management.

Director of Administration in the Ministry of Lands, Dr. Victor Sandikonda, said previous engagement with police officers had yielded positive results; hence considering a fresh interaction.

“Before the sensitizations on the new land laws police officers were having difficulties to handle such cases. The meeting was arranged to impart knowledge to police officers on how they can handle cases of land with regard to the new amended land laws.

“For a fact, in our respective villages all cases related to land are referred to police. Therefore, this simply means that police is a critical stakeholder in dealing with land cases; hence, the call for the meeting,” Sandikonda said.

Sandikonda said the ministry has also engaged other stakeholders such as district commissioners, traditional authorities, group village heads and government directors on the new land laws for them to be at the same wavelength.

Deputy Commissioner of Police for South-West Region, Mavuto M’bobo, said the training has provided an opportunity to police officers to work professionally on cases to do with lands in their respective duty stations.

“Police is one of the departments that is overwhelmed with land issues; therefore, the training is very crucial to our profession and it will assist us to have wide knowledge when dealing with land issues considering that some of the laws that we have been using have been amended,” he said.