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"speaker_name": "Mr. Waithaka",
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"legal_name": "Mwangi Kirika Waithaka",
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"content": "houses, tractors and cows! Today, they are the richest men in this country. However, they tell us that they are very hard working people, when they are actually living on the sweat of the poor who contributed much of the resources. It will not be wrong for one to suggest that these people may not have paid any money for their land. These are the pieces of land they are now selling to the Government and making a lot of money. If these people did not pay for the land they own, there is no reason why we should be asking the Government to buy land from them. They should be asked to voluntarily surrender the pieces of land. If they do not, we should have a mechanism through which to acquire the land and give it to the poor. As has been rightly said, we cannot have people suffering simply because one or two persons own vast pieces of land. For example, the piece of land from Naivasha to Gilgil and Nakuru is owned by one person. When the British Government formed the Settlement Fund Trustee (SFT), they only formed it in a guise to give our Government a loan to buy land from the British settlers. The British settlers had no justification to acquire this land and so, the British Government had to give a loan to our Government in form of the SFT. We do not know how the SFT was run and where the money that was paid by the settlers in the Rift Valley Province went. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you have a piece of land and you do not have a title deed for it, you are still a squatter because you cannot claim ownership over it. This has been a thorn in the flesh because the current Government, and even the previous regimes, have been reluctant to make conclusive decisions as to how to deal with certain regions. For example, since Independence, Nyahururu Town has been administered from Nyandarua District, but it has been in Laikipia politically. Only recently, it was gazetted that Nyahururu Town will be administered from Laikipia. The District Commissioner, Nyandarua, is in Nyahururu Town. This means that all the officers in the office of the District Commissioner, Nyandarua, are squatters in Nyahururu Town, which is in Laikipia District. The Government should come up with a proper policy to ensure that if somebody is allocated a piece of land, he or she gets the relevant documents. We have another very big squatting problem in a village in Kinangop called Mutenyaro. This is a settlement scheme which was started in 1982. The piece of land, instead of being allocated to the poor people in the village, was allocated to people who were working in the Ministry of Lands, big civil servants and DCs. They gave their pieces of land to brokers to sell on their behalf, who then divided the 2.5 acres pieces of land into small plots of 40 feet by 80 feet and sold them to the people who were running away from Enoosupukia and Molo. The people who bought the plots built houses on the plots and went to farm in Kieni Forest. When these people were chased away from Kieni Forest, men came to Nairobi to look for employment, which was not even forthcoming, and the women and children were left in Mutenyara. When the owners of the pieces of land realised that the brokers had sold them at Kshs50 per 40 feet by 80 feet plot, making about Kshs1 million per 2.5 acre piece of land, and they were only demanding from the brokers Kshs150,000 from each plot, they refused to transfer the plots to the new owners. Because these people had not obtained the consent of the Land Control Board, when the matter is taken to court or to any tribunal, the law is always against the squatters. They say that any transaction relating to land which is not blessed by the Land Control Board is null and void for all purposes. They quote Cap.302. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we need to have a law like the one hon. G.G. Kariuki is proposing, so that we can legislate and know how to deal with the squatter issues. It is only an November 15, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3669 Act like the one that has been proposed that will enable us to deal with the issue of squatting in Mutenyara and in other places. If you go to Nyahururu around the former Ol Kalou Salient and Ol Bolosat, you will that find that there are very many squatters. These are people who bought land from people who were allocated land there who were not even from Nyandarua District. They then settled there, but the original owners of the land refused to transfer the land to them. They cannot go to court because they will lose the cases. The law is not in their favour, especially Cap.302. We need to have a law which provides that if you are squatting on a piece of land, you should be documented as the owner of that piece of land. The problem of squatters has even caused another bigger problem in my district. Land ownership issues must be addressed once and for all. We are actually sitting on a time bomb. After Independence, people who were in reserves in Nyandarua were put in district officers villages. Even if the Government does not have any intention to settle them elsewhere, they should be given ownership of the pieces of land on which they have put up their houses. There are people who are going to the Land Registry, looking at the map and saying that the said pieces of land are reserved for villages and have no owners. They then grab these pieces of land. Recently, and the Mover of this Motion will recall, we were settling people in Nyahururu in a site- and-service. Somebody came to Nairobi and found that this piece of land was reserved and not allocated. He was allocated five acres in Nyahururu Town where the site and service housing scheme is situated. There are 69 three bed-roomed houses fully supplied with water and electricity. The owners of these houses have no documents although they are living there, but an individual has a document on his own. This is a company called Excel Develop Limited. The company went to court and sued the occupants of these houses. The issue of land ownership is terrible and must be addressed urgently. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Mover also mentioned a very important issue that the land policy that we are now trying to formulate is not talking about land ownership, but land use. You cannot talk about land use unless you have talked about land ownership. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}