Counties need up-to-date land registry maps to resolve disputes

A construction site for the Standard Gauge Railway at Embulbul in Kajiado North County on August 17, 2016. The land registry map base for Kajiado County is precarious. PHOTO | EVANS HABIL | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The boundary between Kajiado and Nairobi counties forms the peri-urban zone to the sprawling Nairobi city.
  • It has perhaps been Kenya’s hottest property destination for the past two decades.
  • Disputes undermine property value, peace, and development.
  • Property owners in Kajiado zone need to enjoy secure tenure of their land.

Most surveyors dread taking up tasks in Kajiado County, professional fees notwithstanding. Yet such tasks relate to mundane issues such as incorrectly stated land size, missing parcels on official registry maps, identifying parcels for valuation, or resolving simple encroachment issues.

I am sure this sounds familiar to those with land around Kitengela, Isinya, Kiserian, Ongata Rongai, Ngong, and other parts of Kajiado. This is not so in most other counties where surveyors easily use available maps to resolve such basic issues.

So, what makes Kajiado so frustrating and peculiar? Why are surveyors uncomfortable taking up tasks in Kajiado county, leaving interested parties at the mercy of unregistered and unqualified surveyors who have made matters worse?

The boundary between Kajiado and Nairobi counties forms the peri-urban zone to the sprawling Nairobi city. It has perhaps been Kenya’s hottest property destination for the past two decades. Massive amounts of cash have gone into purchase of property in this rim. Many Kenyans, from diverse regions and classes, have set up homes and businesses here.

The race to own a piece of this zone has seen such a high and unplanned influx of people and institutions that it might present a planning nightmare for the country and county for the next few decades.

The residential, educational, and commercial activities and assets in this highly cosmopolitan Nairobi-Kajiado boundary belt stretching from Athi River to beyond Ngong influences a major proportion of the capital city’s GDP and traffic patterns.

It should, therefore, be treated as a priority zone by every policy planner, infrastructure provider, social worker, security officer, and political leader.

We cannot afford to have land and boundary disputes in such an important zone. Disputes undermine property value, peace, and development.

Property owners in this prime zone need to enjoy secure tenure of their land. This will only be possible with reliable registry maps that surveyors can use to distinctly identify any property or feature.

Kajiado district, now county, used to be sparsely populated, with the people primarily engaged in pastoral activities over the available communal land.

Many parts of it comprised vast ranches. The case for accurate property maps, unlike in the highly settled parts of the country, was not compelling. Why?

Appreciate that a very small scale, where one millimetre represents a number of kilometres, is used to represent large zones such as the world or the African continent on a map. Any attempt to measure distances on such a map, therefore, means that any approximation results in kilometres of variance on the ground.

Being vast and scantily settled, Kajiado was committed to small-scale property maps, particularly to represent the large ranches. Technically, this was right, but as the demographics and property market changed, decisions were not made to review and upgrade this mapping.

SOME PARCELS DISAPPEAR

You can, therefore, imagine how difficult it is to try to plot the small parcels derived from the subdivision of the ranches to tie up to the original maps.

Some disappear in scale and some get distorted because of cumulative scale errors. This is why no surveyor can identify them on the ground with reasonable certainty.

The registry map base for Kajiado county is precarious and something needs to be done about it, urgently.

Talk to any of the experts who have had to provide infrastructural services such as roads, water, and power and the problem will be recounted repeatedly.

I recall that when the expansion of the Namanga road was mooted, it became extremely difficult to resolve encroachment issues.

Kenya Rural Roads Authority surveyors have also had great difficulties setting road alignments and recommending compensation for property along the roads. Physical planners have found it difficult to deal with the problem. Valuers too have difficulties identifying property for lending institutions.

The Survey of Kenya offices in Nairobi and Kajiado are littered with sub-division documents that cannot be charted on the official registry maps because they cannot technically fit on the original map base.

However, the owners, who do not understand the problem, continue to wait. Narok county faces a similar problem. Luckily for Narok, urbanisation and population pressure have been slower.

It should be possible to resolve this problem, given today’s technology. However, it requires that human and financial resources be committed to this purpose. The national and county governments need to get together to address these challenges.

Mr Mwathane is a surveyor: [email protected]. Twitter: @mwathane