Mau settlers anxious over impending eviction

With exactly a week to go before a deadline for those settled in a section of the Mau Forest complex expires, thousands of anxious settlers are grappling with the inevitability of eviction.

Related Stories

• Plan to save Mau at risk of collapse
• Stage set for eviction of Mau big shots

A two-pronged move in the past week has cleared any lingering doubts as to the government’s determination to get the settlers out and have the much-anticipated restoration work began.

On Monday last week the Kenya Forest Service gave settlers fourteen days to leave Saino, Korao, Ndoinet, Tinet, Kiptagich and Kiptagich Extension settlements schemes in South Western Mau to pave way for conservation.

Three days earlier the Interim Coordinating Secretariat on the Mau, the team charged with guiding the whole process, had set the ball rolling with a clear programme of action that would see parts of Eastern Mau and South Western Mau repossessed in the next one month.

But even as things seem to get going finally, a litmus test still awaits it in the form of whether the targeted settlers will heed its notice and vacate the forest to pave way for restoration.

Signs that a challenge still lies ahead have been betrayed by the reluctance that has greeted a request by the secretariat over two weeks, asking the settlers to start handing in their title deeds at any of the fourteen centres in districts surrounding the forest complex.

Only a handful of titles deeds have been volunteered, and it remains to be seen what action the government will take should the settlers stay put as most of them have vowed.

To complicate things, further the state appears to have limited its options when it declared that forceful eviction of settlers was not in its plans.

According to Mr Hassan Noor Hassan, the secretariat boss, force would not be employed in having people move out or surrender titles, saying persuasion was the best option in the whole undertaking.

“We do not anticipate use of force; it’s not part of our thinking. We have made an appeal to them so that they surrender the titles and move out as a gesture of patriotism and goodwill,” he said at a recent press briefing in Nakuru on the Mau issue.

A Nation team that visited some of the settlements this week came across settlers verging on panic but still vowing to stay put.

They said they had nowhere to go and accused the government of issuing conflicting signals over the Mau issue.

They demanded that the government halt the process until a proper mechanism to relocate them was in place and issues of compensation worked out.

“Our fathers, grandfathers were buried here. Where are you telling us to go?” said Mr Kelele Tuimising, 47, who says he reads sinister motives in the eviction order.

He said that they were not ready to leave their homes and other properties to a place they are not sure that they will enjoy the same benefits as they in the agriculturally rich Mau area.