Resettle IDPs before referendum, govt urged

• Assistant minister Kabando wa Kabando says government should channel the funds it had set aside for the referendum to settle the IDPs
• Kabando cautions that IDPs issue could be easily forgotten if not addressed before the expected referendum and electioneering period.

The Government has been urged to speedily resettle Internally Displaced Persons who were still in camps before the country switches focus to the constitution referendum and 2012 elections.

Sports and Youth Affairs assistant minister Kabando wa Kabando on Tuesday said the government should channel the funds it had set aside for the referendum to settle the IDPs since donors have pledged to fund the poll.

“To entrench the spirit of national healing let us resolve the scar of IDPs. The cash in the budget for the exercise should be relocated to settle and compensate our brothers and sisters in camps,” Mr Kabando said.

In a statement to media, Mr Kabando likened the draft constitution to a salad of “diverse new species cut from a desert of struggle.”

“Amidst despair, IDPs need an oasis to sip a share of prevalent optimism. Lets be bold and precondition their reprieve as we implement new law,” the Mukurweini MP said.

Mr Kabando said the draft reached by the Parliamentary Select Committee on constitution in Naivasha has reassured Kenyans collective optimism of national development.

The pledge by the international community to fund the referendum, he said, was an added advantage to the milestones already achieved on the draft constitution.

He said the government should show that it was compassionate to its people’s needs by resolving the IDPs issue once and for all.

He said the IDP camps were a “stark testimony to politics of hate, greed and impunity, and though we may not wish the current situation away, we could start by implementing necessary solutions to our electorate’s problems.”

Mr Kabando cautioned that the IDPs issue could be easily forgotten if not addressed before the expected referendum and electioneering period.
He said the IDPs could not benefit from the new constitutional dispensation if they were still in camps.

The government, through the Ministry of Finance has since set aside Sh1.4 billion for the purchase of 14,600 acres of land. So far, according to the Minister for Special Programmes, Dr Naomi Shaban, 3, 422 acres have been identified, purchased and IDPs are being resettled in Rongai, Subukia and Molo.