Tough law targets property owners
What you need to know:
- All property owners who built houses without seeking approval from the defunct City Council will have six months within which to regularise their status or risk having their buildings demolished.
- “All these buildings were built using Kenyans’ funds, they are Kenyans’ wealth and where a building has got certain integrity issues, we will ensure that they comply with the requirements, we will only bring down buildings if the structural integrity poses risk and danger to the health of Nairobians,” Governor Evans Kidero (above) said earlier this year.
- According to City Hall, only 40 per cent of buildings meet the required standards.
Buildings on river banks, railway and road reserves will be demolished if a new law proposed by the Nairobi County government comes into force.
The proposed law also targets buildings on public land and those that do not meet standards approved by the county.
All property owners who built houses without seeking approval from the defunct City Council will have six months within which to regularise their status or risk having their buildings demolished.
These are some of the proposals in the Nairobi City County Regularisation of Developments Bill. The proposed legislation is currently before the County Assembly and it is meant to crackdown on rogue contractors and put an end to the problem of unsound buildings.
The Bill seeks to regularise all buildings that had not been approved after property owners protested against blanket demolitions.
“All these buildings were built using Kenyans’ funds, they are Kenyans’ wealth and where a building has got certain integrity issues, we will ensure that they comply with the requirements, we will only bring down buildings if the structural integrity poses risk and danger to the health of Nairobians,” Governor Evans Kidero said earlier this year.
According to City Hall, only 40 per cent of buildings meet the required standards.
The Bill will set up a vetting committee comprising of an urban planning expert, surveyor, engineer, environmental expert, architect, lands officers and legal officers to review building plans for approval.
Dr Kidero agreed that approvals during the defunct City Council’s period were riddled with corruption and protected well-connected property owners from the enforcement of standards.
“It is important that we review the structural plans so that we don’t see buildings collapsing, it was never their mistake, it was the mistake of lands officers,” the governor said.
A lot of lives have been lost in cases of collapsed buildings in Nairobi as the housing demand soars.
LIVES LOST
Some of the cases include a major one on Ronald Ngala Street in 2006, another at Pipeline, Embakasi, in June 2011 and the recent collapse in Mlolongo in June 2012 that left several people dead.
Experts have blamed the collapse on inaccurate construction material ratios, incompetent designs and poor workmanship, all of which are supposed to be monitored by the county technocrats for compliance.
The Bill in its current form, however, gives sweeping powers to the County Executive Committee member for Planning, who is allowed to offer conditional regularisation subject to conditions that he will set for himself.
He will also come up with the procedures for application for regularisation, serve notices, determine actions to be taken and corresponds with objections for demolitions with the advice from the committee.
