City Hall, Nairobi. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU
The Nairobi
City County Government has disowned lease renewals, claiming cartels at
the Lands ministry headquarters are depriving hapless citizens of prime
land.
County secretary, Dr Robert Ayisi, said they only
act upon instructions from the ministry to approve demolition and
building plans for multi-billion shilling properties that have sprung up
on land whose lease had expired.
“We wrote to the
Lands Ministry for a list of leases renewed after it emerged some people
used dubious means to evict lawful landowners only to dispose the land
to unsuspecting developers who are now at risk of losing multi-billion
shilling properties,” he said.
Dr Ayisi said the
cartels working in cahoots with senior ministry officials moved with
speed and forged the county’s development plans where existing buildings
were condemned paving the way for demolition and subsequent
construction of new multi-storeyed structures.
Speaking
in Nairobi during a meeting attended by Lands Cabinet Secretary, Prof
Joseph Kaimenyi, Interior CS Joseph Nkaissery and his ICT counterpart
Joe Mucheru, the county secretary said time had come for them to be
involved in renewal of leases to avert further incidents where citizens
have had their properties seized.
National Land
Commission Vice chairperson Abigail Mbagaya said many families had filed
complaints with the commission following threats of evictions.
“Some
people never knew their leases had expired but learnt of it when a
group of goons waving a court order stormed their premises backed by
police officers to effect eviction. Courts need to consider all sides
before issuing eviction orders.
“Why would a court be
moved on forged papers and proceed to grant an eviction application? The
best way to safeguard such problems will be for courts to demand that
all parties be served for an inter parte hearing,” she said.
Prof
Kaimenyi said county governments had been accused of sanctioning
evictions of hapless Kenyans from prime parcels and warned that such
behaviour would not be tolerated. He said devolved units had no powers
to issue orders on eviction and allocation of land.
“A
taskforce will be formed this month to review all lease renewals,
extensions and cancellations. I promise you any civil servants found to
have used a flawed process to effect the changes will be fired and
prosecuted,” he said.
Mr Mucheru said since Nairobi had
its lands registry records digitised, it will be easy to track whose
pin was used to access the land records and make the changes that
necessitated issuance of a new lease.
“Just like IFMIS
at Treasury and use of technology at Kenya National Examination
Commission, we shall use technology to pin the culprits giving the Lands
ministry a bad name,” he said.
jkariuki@ke.nationmedia.com
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