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{
"id": 1337442,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1337442/?format=api",
"text_counter": 369,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Kilgoris, JP",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Julius Sunkuli",
"speaker": null,
"content": "From the outset, we should register public land. It is very important and when the Bill comes to the Committee of the whole House, Hon. King’ara must accept an amendment that will introduce a depository. It has been said, but it would be necessary to create a department or a registrar of public lands within the National Land Commission (NLC), so that we have one person who has possession of the information and titles relating to public land. This is very important. My point relates a lot from what I get from my experience, that apart from just registering public land which already exists as such, it will be incumbent upon the House in subsequent amendments, to make sure that there is public land and for particular purposes. The fact that people actually die is not planned. For now, we are burying our people in our homes. However, there is an increasing number of Kenyans who are moving to urban areas, and I know from where you come from, every time somebody dies, they will take that person to Nyanza. But there will come a time when that will not be tenable, even in Nyanza. We have a habit which we got from our bantu neighbours, that when a person dies, the body is brought to stay in a house overnight. But now, if you are living on the 15th floor of an apartment, that may not be physically possible. It is time we compelled every town planner to ensure that there are some utilities beginning from cemeteries, so that we can plan for a future where people will be buried in cemeteries rather than on their private land because private land is diminishing. If you go to areas like Kisii, our neighbors, that facility will soon disappear. You can no longer bury people at home because the land is diminishing. Every town should have public land for that purpose. For those of us who come from the Maasai Community, we need a lot of land to be used for cultural purposes. Just a few months ago, we had a ceremony called the Eunoto Ceremony, which requires use of land over time. Now, we have resorted to asking certain elders to give us their land so that we can use it for the ceremony, and then we degrade their land environmentally and so on. This could be sorted out by ensuring that there is public land which is going to be used for every Eunoto Ceremony and other subsequent ceremony that is going to be done. Apart from just registering land that already exists, it is important that we create such land and register it. The question still begs: who will be the depository of that title? who will hold that title? We have an oxymoron called community land. When you ask who the community is, nobody tells you. We used to have pieces of land called group ranches. These were pieces of land that were registered under the Group Lands Registration Act. Those officials of the group ranch took the land as if it belonged to them. Hon. Temporary Speaker, the groups have more or less disappeared, but according to the law, we have community land. What is community land? Who actually owns community land? That is why it becomes very important that public land be registered and there is one person or office that is going to be responsible and going to be referred to as the office that is holding titles of such land. There are too many pieces of land that we used to have. I see buildings in Mavoko being demolished, but what happened to public land called holding grounds? We who trade in livestock used to drive our cattle close to Athi River, and before the cows could be bought, there was holding ground. Such ground was also in Dagoretti, but today we do not know what happened. People have grabbed holding grounds and built apartments there. When you bring your cows, you take them to the Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) starving and emaciated. Those holding grounds where you could restore them back to their normal condition after a long drive from say Marsabit or Mandera no longer exist now. That is one of the reasons this Bill is important. It should have sorted out the issue of grabbing of our holding grounds because they are still very important. We must say that when public land is The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}