MP owns land in Kilifi settlement scheme

Squatters demonstrate against alleged land grabbing at Chembe Kibabamche settlement scheme in Watamu, Malindi District, in April 2009. FILE PHOTO | DANIEL NYASSY |

What you need to know:

  • More than 20,000 residents to receive title deeds.
  • I wasn’t allocated the parcel but inherited it from my grandfather, Mung’aro says.

Kilifi North MP Gideon Mung’aro has denied claims that he was illegally allocated land in Chembe Kibabamche and Kilifi/Jimba settlement schemes.

He instead said he helped residents to get what was rightfully theirs that had been illegally allocated to foreign companies.

The MP said the only property he owned in the scheme was a piece of land he inherited from his grandfather. He said the parcel was not among those investigated by a task force he established to look into land allocation in the schemes.

ONLY ONE PROPERTY

“I have only one property in that scheme which I got way back in 1999 from my grandfather and it is in my name, and I am a resident of Chembe, which is in Gede Sub-Location, where I was born,” he told journalists in Malindi on Saturday.

Recently, the High Court in Malindi cancelled 27 prime land leases issued in the two settlement schemes in 2012.

The leases were granted on a recommendation by a taskforce Mr Mung’aro established in 2010, when he was the Malindi MP.

The taskforce nullified previous allocation in the schemes and transferred the prime properties to new owners, but the court ruled the action was unconstitutional, null and void.

Meanwhile, more than 20,000 squatters are to receive title deeds by the end of this year.

County executive officer in charge of Land, Housing and Urban Planning John Mazuri said adjudication of community land in parts of Ganze, Rabai, Kaloleni and Magarini sub-counties had been completed.

The adjudicated parcels are in Kaliangombe-Jimba, Mwele, Mleji in Rabai, Petanguo and Tsangalweni in Ganze, Madzimbani-Mitangoni, Kitengwani in Kaloleni and Baricho in Magarini, he told participants during the discussion of the county’s spatial plan draft at Juwaba Hall.

“We are planning to make sure that all those families living in those adjudicated sections are given title deeds by the end of this year,” he said.

Offer letters for the Gongoni and Bureni settlement schemes were being processed, while the beneficiary list for Chakamall settlement scheme was being prepared, he added.