Makueni IDPs want Kaimenyi to resettle them
Land, Housing and Urban Development Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi speaks during a breakfast meeting for leaders of the Institution of Chartered Surveyors at the Nairobi Serena Hotel on April 7, 2016. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- People said to have been displaced in efforts to conserve wildlife
- Squatters live in small grass-thatched shanties covered with tattered plastic sheeting
- Residents say the government has abandoned them
A group of internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in camps along the edge of Chyulu Hills National Park in Kibwezi West, Makueni want visiting Land, Housing and Urban Development Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi to resettle them.
Mr Kaimenyi was expected to address a rally in Wote town on Friday and issue land ownership documents to more than 30,000 residents.
On Thursday, when the Nation toured the camps, which have more than 160 households, residents said the government had abandoned them and condemned them to living in poor conditions for long.
“We need the minister to regard and treat us like the squatters in Waitiki Farm and resettle us,” said Mr Raphael Munyeke, the chairman of the IDPs at Wildlife Camp, referring to squatters whom the national government allocated land in Mombasa in January.
Mr Munyeke’s expectations mirrored those by squatters in Kalembe Raha, Kivuthini, Boma 4, Ilatu and Mukameni squatter camps in Kibwezi West.
Scattered across the six squatter camps sandwiched between homes of the affluent in Nguumo ward, the squatters live in small grass-thatched shanties covered with tattered plastic sheeting.
A closer examination of the shanties from their gaping walls showed that the families living in them lacked items such as furniture and utensils.
“Once it rains, we get soaked in rain water, causing us immense aguish and sometimes diseases,” Muthike Mutua, a mother of six, said.
The squatters said that they were exposed to dangerous wild animals that sneaked from Chyulu Hills National Park and ate their crops.
PRESERVE ZONE
The people had called the shanties home for years after the government displaced them in efforts to conserve wildlife, the residents said.
Reached for comment, John Mwenze, the Nguumo Member of County Assembly, said landless families had been attracted to the area in late 1980s after the government moved to preserve the wildlife conservation zone.
“However, the problem of squatter camps peaked in (the) 2000s when the then area (Kibwezi) MP Kalembe Ndile together with senior administrators offered to resettle the squatters in Kiboko Settlement Scheme, only to leave pockets of the squatters unsettled,” he said in a telephone interview.
In an exercise that was shrouded in graft, he said, genuine squatters missed out on their rightful land allocation as the land ended up in the hands of affluent individuals.
During its ongoing inquiry on land disputes in the settlement scheme, the National Land Commission (NLC) found massive land allocation irregularities, some involving senior government officials.
A dispute pitting the squatters and the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation over a contested piece of land in the area has frustrated efforts by the Kenya Wildlife Service to fence off the zone.
Mr Mwenze did not rule out the existence of fake squatters prospecting for land among those living in the camps.
He said: “Once the NLC is done ironing out the cases of multiple allocations in Kiboko Settlement Scheme, we hope that the IDPs and indeed all squatters will be resettled”.
