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{
    "id": 625310,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/625310/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 166,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Ombaka",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1007,
        "legal_name": "Christine Oduor Ombaka",
        "slug": "christine-oduor-ombaka"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for the opportunity. First, while it has been said that the definition of “community” is not very clear, I still want to say there is an attempt to define “community land”, although it is not as comprehensive as expected. I would have wished to add a few things like “a community is a group of people who speak a similar language, have certain values and live in the same geographical area”. I am happy they have used certain words here like “clan”. A clan is a community and people within that particular region have values. There is an attempt to define “community” and maybe we need to highlight a little more and go deeper into what it is. Historically, community land has been orally passed down from one community or clan to another and it has never been registered. It is time we thought about registration of those pieces of land that have brought a lot of conflict between people. This is because they are simply community land. People just assume that the land is reserved for a particular clan of people who have never thought that it is important to register the land. That is what we have seen over the years. Community-based land has been the centre of conflicts related to over-grazing and settlement. People have been killed in land-related conflicts. People have moved away from land and have looked for pasture elsewhere. These problems arise because registration has never been clear. Nobody is sure about who owns the land. It is just assumed to be reserved land that belongs to a particular clan. The Bill is good because it is going to regulate the ownership of community land. It is going to spell out the uses of this land in terms of how people can develop and live peacefully with other communities. What is challenging is the fact that the Bill allows private developers to lease these pieces of land or rent the land that belongs to the community. That is where the problem begins to occur even though the Bill is good. The moment you allow developers to come in, they will come in with development that will stay for a long time. They will not move and leave that land for that group of people after many years. The moment they stay for over five years, they begin to believe that the land belongs to them. They do not realise that they need to stay there for a certain period of time, move on and leave the land to its owners. They hang on that land until they own it. The owners of the land or the community questions how they came in and it will be too late because the developer will have stayed for a long time and put in developments that are not easy to remove. Maybe they have built schools, hospitals and settled thus taking the land very indirectly. Land grabbing has been happening in this country and sometimes, the land that is grabbed is already registered. The pieces of land have title deeds, but grabbing is going on. Why do we register, get title deeds and at the same time somebody grabs the land? Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, we should look at the power of title deeds and what we can do so that once you have a title deed, nobody should grab that land. People see land being grabbed by other people who have already registered. So, registration of land is still very challenging. Even when we put it on paper and make it official that the land belongs to somebody, another person still grabs it. Those are the challenges that I find in land registration generally whether it is community or individual land, somebody will still grab it. Are we serious in land registration?"
}