140 refugee families moved to new land

The first lot of 140 displaced families from Mawingo Eco village in Nyandarua arrived at their newly acquired land in Nakuru’s Rongai division on Friday night.

The displaced families from the largest IDP camp in the country were flagged off by Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta. They were received on the other end by the Rift Valley Provincial Commissioner, Mr Osman Warfa, and the Provincial Police Commissioner, Mr Francis Munyambu.

The chairman of displaced families, Mr Peter Kariuki Githinji, said a second lot of 600 families would be relocated to Rongai on Monday. This marked the biggest achievement in the government’s efforts to resettle internally displaced people because the Mawingo IDPs had sworn that they would reject the relocation plan.

The more than 14,000 internal refugees who pooled the Sh10,000 compensation money and bought a 50-acre land in Nyandarua had insisted that the would only agree to the plan if the government expanded the land they were currently on.

It took the efforts of six MPs, among them Roads assistant minister Lee Kinyanjui, to persuade them to move. The other MPs were Erastus Mureithi (Ol-Kalou), Nelson Gaichuhie (Subukia), Jeremiah Kioni (Ndaragwa) and David Ngugi (Kinangop).

The 740 displaced families, which will each have a two-acre piece of land, have been settled on 1,171 acres which were bough by the government. More families will be resettled in Solai and Subukia areas within the larger Nakuru district. Mr Githinji said sub-division of the land will commence next week after the other 600 families arrive.

Meanwhile, hundreds of IDPs on Saturday demonstrated in Ol-Kalou town in Nyandarua Central District saying they had been left out in the resettlement exercise. The accused the President Kibaki and the Prime Minister Mr Raila Odinga of being insensitive to their plight.

“We want the President and the Prime Minister to realise that we are suffering as a result of the mess created by them,” said Mr Stanley Njihia who said he was from Molo. They demanded that the ongoing resettlement exercise be halted until the government verified the names of all internal refugees against the voting registers of the defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya to show where each voted. They vowed to continue holding the demonstrations until the government listened to them.