1800 Kibera families to move to modern houses

About 1,800 households living in Kibera slum in Nairobi will from August 18 start moving into modern houses, it was announced on Sunday.

And each family will be paying Sh1,000 every month for the houses built under Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme (Kensup).
“The rent will include water and electricity,” deputy secretary in the ministry of Housing Mr Salim Molla said.

He explained that rent for the house will only be Sh500 while Sh300 is meant to pay for electricity while the rest is for water consumption.

Mr Molla was speaking at a meeting his Ministry had convened to sensitise the slum dwellers on modalities of decamping from their informal settlement to the new housing units the government has constructed.

The meeting was held at Soweto village, which is part of the sprawling Kibera slum.

Mr Molla who said he had come to represent Housing PS, Mr Tirop Kosgey was accompanied by the national coordinator of Kensup, Mrs Leah Muraguri.

He also announced that from Monday, a surveyor will be marking every house unit indicating its number in the order the beneficiaries have been registered.

The official at the same time said the government will assist the slum dwellers to relocate by providing the with money for transporting their household goods.

But he instructed them to ensure they demolish their ghettoes immediately they relocate.

“We want to start building new other houses in the area where you decamp so that we can settle all the residents of this slum,” he told the meeting.

Resettlement in the new houses will be made bit by bit.

Kensup (Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme), Mrs Muraguri said was started by the government in 2004 with the aim of resettling all the people living in slums into decent houses.

“The government is determined to resettle you in decent houses and get rid of all slums in this country. And we want to start implementing the project with you people of Kibera,” Mrs Muraguri said.

However, what emerged from the Soweto meeting is a clear indication that the resettlement programme will not be easy for the government.

Instead of being enthusiastic about the new move to relocate them, the residents expressed a lot of dissatisfaction and scepticism.

First, they were not comfortable with Mr Molla’s directive that they will first have to demolish their ghettoes while moving out to the new houses.

Again they expressed suspicions saying the government may increase the rent once they occupy the new houses, which are not far from their slums.

Others were grumbling saying they cannot demolish their ghettoes as it is from this roughly constructed structures they carry out most of their businesses.

Both Mr Molla and Mrs Muraguri had a difficult time answering the challenging questions the residents of the village were asking.

What they said is that several meetings are required to explain to the people about what they called decamping programme.

The meetings will be convened by the provincial administration.