The Land Settlement Agency (LSA) has received thousands of applications for the Land for the Landless Programme since its relaunch earlier this year.
The programme was officially relaunched in January 2026, with online applications opening on February 23rd.
An update was provided by Minister of Land and Legal Affairs, Saddam Hosein, at Thursday’s Post Cabinet Media Conference.
He said the programme has already surpassed expectations.
“When we launched this programme, it was, it had a lot of buy-in, I must say. I checked with the Chairman of LSA last week and we have crossed 10,000 applications. So that shows how many persons in this country want land ownership. And that is in fact, the reason why we created this new Ministry of Land and Legal Affairs. Initially it was tossed around with Agriculture and so on. And agriculture itself is a huge Ministry. So now there’s particular attention being placed to land ownership.”
Given the overwhelming demand, the Minister said the LSA is now looking to develop additional lands under the programme.
“Based on this great interest in this programme, we will now have to develop more and more lands through the LSA to see that this programme continue to see how many persons we can be able to give lands to. But I must make it abundantly clear, the lands are not free. Again, it is going to be a heavily subsidised price for the Land for the Landless.”
Minister Hosein also addressed misconceptions about the income requirements for applicants.
“I saw some people were making some comments on social media and so on. Well, why does we have to earn $30,000? We never said that. We said that you have to earn less than $30,000 to qualify. So while there are 10,000 applications, I’m sure when the filtering exercise takes place, some persons may or may not qualify for the criteria that is set.”