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{
    "id": 627627,
    "url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/627627/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 175,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ogolla",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1264,
        "legal_name": "Gideon Ochanda Ogolla",
        "slug": "gideon-ochanda-ogolla"
    },
    "content": "government can or cannot do when it is holding unregistered land in trust. It says that you cannot transact, which means that you cannot change use or alienate. However, what happens to townships that are coming up in unregistered areas such as markets? In my view, this is one thing that the Bill has not looked at very clearly and needs to be brought out in a better way. The other problem that the Bill is not dealing with very clearly is the whole issue of transition. How are we moving from where we were into this Bill? One area is that the transactions that have be done before particularly on trust lands were done by the county councils and town councils. There are many others that have got into some kind of lease arrangements with some other parties. I want to bring a point here from my constituency on the Yala Swamp area, which is a trust land. The Bondo County Council and Siaya County Council got into an arrangement with external investors and they have a contract. They have leased it. How does that come in, in terms of this Bill? If we went ahead as Siaya or Bondo after the Bill is adopted and formed a community land and went ahead and registered that area, how then do we relate, as a newly registered land, with an external actor contracted by the former county council? That, in my view, is an area the transition mechanism needs to look into in a clearer manner. Another thing that we need to consider is the fact that about three quarters of the land we have in this country was trust land. This runs all the way from Turkana County to the Coast. There will be difficulties in registering a huge chunk of land as community land. Small areas like what used to be cattle dips or riparian areas are very easy to handle. You can mobilise communities, bring them together and register them. What happens to areas like Turkana, Marsabit, Wajir and Garissa? How do you get people to come together and appreciate that all the land belongs to them? How do you get all of them to come together for the purpose of registering the entire area as a community land? That is one thing this Bill needs to look into. How do you sensitise and mobilise communities for them to form a community that can register land in vast areas like the ones in northern Kenya? The other issue is practical challenges. As I mentioned, where we have small areas like what used to be cattle dips and which were trust areas, people need to come up as a community and register it. That is simpler and can easily be done than when we talk about huge tracts of land in some parts of this country. This Bill lays out a proper arrangement for registering community land, but it does not do much in terms of unregistered community land, particularly where it gives the authority of trust to the county government. We might end up having that trust abused in the same manner the former local authorities did. With those remarks, I beg to support hoping that the issues that we have highlighted will be looked into."
}