Ministry yet to surrender some functions lands commission

The delay by the ministry to handover some key roles to the land commission has been cited as one of the key challenges in the agency’s first year of operations.

A progress report of the National Land Commission says the ministry was yet to surrender some functions, leading to a slower start of its operations.

The Progress Report March 2013 -March 2014 named the National Land Information Management System as one of the items yet to be surrendered to the commission.

The commission also cites the fact that public land continued to be allocated by the Commissioner of Lands in its first year in office as another factor derailing its operations.

It also accuses some land officers of tampering with records, including survey maps and deed plans, and called for the vetting or retraining of such staff.

The report is an indication of the strained relationship between the commission and the ministry.

Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu has been embroiled in a bitter power struggle with the commission chairman, Dr Muhammad Swazuri, over sharing of roles in the docket, a matter that is headed to the Judiciary.

Nationally, the report shows that issues of land grabbing, especially public plots and concerns over issuing of title deeds, are top on the list of complaints the agency faces.

The two issues account for 85 per cent of the complaints raised during field visits by the NLC in its field trips to 43 counties in the past year.

According to the commission’s progress report, complaints on historical land injustices, illegal allocations and slow or delays in completion of land adjudication process are also high followed by issues concerning land grabbing of institutional land, missing records and inadequate financial and physical resources.

The commission also found out that squatters on both public and private land, landlessness, dispossession of land through corrupt and fraudulent dealings, resource and boundary conflicts, fake titles and documents, court cases, multiple plot allocation letters in many towns, urban and rural market centres among other numerous complaints were also rampant.

“Corruption was named as the main catalyst to all the inefficiencies in the land sector,” the report says.

To address some of the concerns, the commission suspended new grant allocations until rules and regulations provided by the Land Act, Land Registration Act and the NLC Act are approved by Parliament.

Already, the regulations have been finalised and are due to be forwarded to Parliament.

The commission has also constituted a committee to draft a Bill towards a legislation to provide for investigations and adjudication of claims arising from historical land injustices.

It has also requested all State organs occupying public land to provide it with details of such land for inclusion in its data base.

“County governments too have been requested to carry out audits of their land and submit the details to the commission.”

But the commission announced it would not address inter-county boundaries such as those witnessed between Meru and Isiolo, Meru and Tharaka-Nithi, Machakos and Makueni (issue of Konza Techno-city boundary) as well as Kisii and Nyamira counties (Keroka Town).

The commission argues that the county disputes are the responsibility of Parliament as provided for in the Constitution.

“The counties concerned should petition Parliament to constitute an independent commission to review and determine the disputed county boundaries,” the report says.

The commission has promised to complete the process of forming County Land Management Boards after receiving the supplementary budget funds. Short-listing for secretaries and members of the boards has been completed, paving the way for interviews.

The commission formed a committee that receives and identifies complaints on public land encroachment such as City Park in Parklands, Nairobi, Kisite Mpunguti island in Kwale and Embakasi Ranching scheme plots surrendered for public utilities upon subdivision of the ranch.

“The Commission is carrying out investigations to establish illegalities and or irregularities,” the report says.

According to the report, the Commission has initiated action to recover encroached public land by supporting court cases filed by resident associations against private developers.

Some of the notable areas in Nairobi are Tena Estate, Fedha Estate, South ‘C’, Kasarani and Dagoretti.

The report singles out failure to digitise land records as the greatest drawback in quick land transactions has been poor land records’ management.

Over the past year, the commission 3,323 leases and grants were prepared. These were either for new grants, renewals of leases or resultants of subdivisions.

The exercise was done under the transitional provisions and were executed by the former Commissioner of Lands upon verification by the Commission.

Preparation for the start of verification of over 5,000 letters of allotment submitted to the Commission for verification is in progress.

Space is a challenge; and so is retrieval of authority files to facilitate this exercise.

Since the inception of the land adjudication and settlement programme, a total of 1,987 adjudication sections comprising of 2.1 parcels have been finalised, while 494 settlement schemes covering have been established, the report says.

Countrywide, the report says, 1.2 million Kenyans would be settled and issued with title deeds arising out of adjudication when the exercise is completed.

The commission recently received Sh400 million for use until the end of the financial year.

“The NLC is grossly underfunded to achieve its mandate,” the report says, adding the commission requires Sh15 billion.

The funding requirements will reach Sh16.6 billion in the 2016/2017 financial year.