Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 625335,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/625335/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 191,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) F.I. Ali",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13152,
        "legal_name": "Fatuma Ibrahim Ali",
        "slug": "fatuma-ibrahim-ali"
    },
    "content": "First and foremost, I want to recognise the work of the Committee. They are fulfilling a constitutional mandate. This is good progress. A lot of effort has been put into this Bill. The Chairman has done a good job and we support him. If you walk around, you will realise that pastoral areas are where community land is likely to be found. Counties that have vast land have had trust lands. The Chairman of the Committee appreciated the Report of the PPG caucus that was presented by the Member for Narok North. I would like to confirm that during the Bomas Constitution-making process, I was in the Committee on Environment and Lands and I had serious interactions with communities who claimed that their land was trust land and group ranches. During that Bomas process, communities gave their views in terms of aspiring to protect, manage and administer their land. They also gave a big report on their fears about land which was grabbed from them. Some of the pastoralists’ land, which we are now discussing as community land, was even reported to have been used as dumping site for toxic waste. Many residents of these areas have suffered many sicknesses. In the Committee’s Report, many concerns were raised by institutions which gave their views on the Bill. These institutions include the NLC, the former CIC and various civil society organisations with serious technical expertise on community land. They all felt that the taskforce, which was very consultative and participatory, had produced an ideal report which communities associate with. The only institution that had divergent opinion in this engagement was the Ministry of Land, Housing and Urban Development, which mutilated the highly cherished and consultative report of the taskforce. I am glad the Chair of the Committee is nodding in support of my point. The Committee’s Report says that some of the areas with glaring errors include failure to define “community land” and “communities”. The word “organised”, which is used in the definition of “community” can be regarded as groups of individuals. It can easily be manipulated through interpretation. Trust land has experienced both external and internal manipulations from locals and non-locals. Huge tracts of land are hived off from community land by local elites, tycoons and other external wealthy and powerful groups. We need to address the issue of how we can repossess community land which was allocated to individuals in dubious and corrupt way. An example is Wajir County where almost half of a sub-county is owned by somebody from another part of the country. We do not know how he got the title or how he was allocated the land. We do not know the process that was used to allocate a huge community grazing land to an individual. This Report does not address mechanisms to repossess illegally acquired land. We need to address that. That is a serious practice that is happening in this country. Some people own half or two-thirds of a county. We cannot ignore that kind of problem. Another issue that is very glaring is the structure of managing, disposing, registering and administering community land in this Report. One of the consensus gaps in this Report which was raised by CIC, NLC, county governments and serious civil society groups is that there is no structure. We are talking of a very amorphous structure which denies communities opportunity to give, dispose, manage or protect community land. The Cabinet Secretary is given enormous powers. This is the same Cabinet Secretary at the national level who has allowed massive exploitation, grabbing and dispossession of land belonging to such communities. That mandate is again given to the Cabinet Secretary who is so 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."
}