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{
    "id": 925212,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/925212/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 196,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Luanda, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Christopher Omulele",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2145,
        "legal_name": "Christopher Omulele",
        "slug": "christopher-omulele"
    },
    "content": "dealing with the one who displaced them from their original land? That is a situation that we should not engender in this country. Even as the Report suggests and recommends that these people who have been displaced should be settled, I expect this committee to have come up with a roadmap to say how we shall recoup the land for forests that these people have taken up. We should re-afforest another equivalent piece of land and as they occupy this land, find a way that they will use this land and ensure there is afforestation. Most of my brothers and sisters seem to believe that if one is a squatter on a piece of land and buries some of his relatives on it, then by virtue of burying people on that land, it should continue to be in their possession. I do not believe in that. We have put ourselves in a catch 22 situation. From the time human beings started existing on this earth, they have been buried all over. Even on this parliament grounds, we do not know which people were buried here a million or 100 years ago. If those people were to come and say, we buried our grandfathers here, it would mean that we will have to remove a whole city. This business of saying that we have buried our grandfathers and our children on this land and therefore we must take and continue staying on it, does not make any sense. We must move away from that kind of argument as fast as possible. Hon. Speaker, I was speaking to my brother here and I was telling him that probably the former President recommended that these people should be resettled on this land. That recommendation was made and the people who carried out all those recommendations were Government officers. The question that this Committee should have asked itself, from the time the former President issued that directive is, how did the people who receive that directive carry out that mandate? Did they do a proper analysis and find out how they were going to carry out that resettlement and under which law did they do it? The law has always existed. The law on resettlement of people, de-gazettement of claiming land from forests, converting it into human settlement has always existed. The lands officers who settled these people on this land must be held to account. If they did not follow the law, I expect to see in this Report that so and so did not follow the law and that officer should be held to account. We must hold these people to account. The directives that were issued by the former President should be in this Report. That is why I do not agree that the committee has done a thorough job. As a country, we must hold people to account. If you are given a directive, go and resettle, divide a certain piece of land and divide it and you fail to follow the law, the Committee must say, Omulele or Hon. Mboko who was the Registrar of Lands at this point in time, received this directive from the President who had authority, but did not follow the law. Therefore, the person to be held liable is this person. They have not done that in this Report. That is why, I am saying the Committee has not done a good job and we should not be afraid. We must not be afraid to knock down buildings just because people have built on the wrong land. People are taking up forest land and we cry every day that we do not have sufficient water in this country or we do not have sufficient forest cover in this country and they tell us they have built a school, a beautiful house, a market or hospital on this land and, therefore, they cannot take it down. I do not think that is the kind of attitude we should have if we want to develop our country in an orderly way. There is an office within this land system that is called a planning office. There is a Physical Planning office within the lands system. I would have expected the committee to have called the Physical Planners for Kiambu to come and say how they have planned this land to be used. We cannot continue creating slums all over and justify by saying that since we have buried our ancestors and built houses on this land we should be allowed to continue staying on it. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}