The inconvenience and costs of today's fraud and forgery are high.

Think about the public officers who are complicit.

Yet we pay them. Think about the many fraudulently prepared school certificates and their impact to educational standards.

The unqualified have used them for entry into institutions of higher learning and the job market at the expense of the qualified.

Think about the fraudulently prepared national identity cards and passports.

These have been used to provide Kenyan citizenship and facilitate international travel to foreign nationals, adversely affecting our national security.

Systems must be evaluated to close the inherent loopholes.

And complicit public officers must be identified, sacked and prosecuted as a deterrent.

In the property industry, the implications are much more ominous.

Irregularities could destabilise our property base and economy. In my last two discussions on this column, I alluded to some of the prevalent irregularities.

The running message was that the property industry has been terribly infiltrated by suave fraudsters capable of forging or replicating any property document....be it a letter of allotment, a development plan, a survey plan, a deed plan or even a title.

The fraudsters will also drive the preparation of any institutional approvals necessary to support the transactions they desire.

They too have managed to buy bankable institutional goodwill in key public offices.

Their deals are processed at super speeds while legitimate ones wait. It is amazing and puzzling.

Just the other day, I sat to take a drink in Tala market, Kangundo, and a woman walked in.

All eyes turned to her. I got curious and asked who she was.

In whispers, someone told me, "She's like a mobile lands office. She organises for anything, any land document one may desire." Imagine!! Yet she isn't in government.

And do not look there. This is the scenario in many districts in the country today, urban and rural. Cabals of shrewd chaps have transformed themselves into land registries for the "manufacture" of land documents.

And they have got so daring that they operate with strange impunity. The results?

An increasingly threatened and insecure property base.

Unlike before, many financial institutions today have to spend more on due diligence for any properties offered as collateral.

Others are scaling down on the use of properties as collateral to reduce loses.

And this is perfectly understandable given the frustrations and loses some face.

Progressively, this will weaken our property base and erode the opportunity to provide funding for the development of our urban and rural areas.

The emergence of the concept of duplicated titles also adds to land disputes in the country.

Remember, once the cartels effect the destruction of the documents held in the land registries, the "new owners" put the onus to prove ownership on you, the legitimate property owner.

And since official searches will reveal that the title you hold isn't officially supported, an expensive and time consuming due process begins.

The frustration tells on even the wealthy.

And think about the irony and costs of having to employ a person to watch over your houses, land or plots while away. It's like land has become a chattel.

Think about cartels stalking you and disposing your property when you travel or die testate.

That they move from place to another identifying and making money from property they do not own.

Dealing in property without providing witnesses to attest your ownership even when you have valid documents and official searches today has become so precarious.

This isn't the standard concept of property holding. The system is slowly giving and something must be urgently done.