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Land order
will lead to anarchy, Govt warned
Story by SUNDAY NATION Team
Publication Date: 7/3/2005
The Government's order for seizure
of grabbed land without seeking court orders attracted angry
reactions yesterday.
The Law Society of Kenya accused
the government of setting the stage for widespread violence by
advocating a "gangster" style of redress.
The Catholic Church supported the
return of grabbed land to the rightful institutions, but said the
repossession must be carried out according to the law.
Among leaders who applauded the
move was Education permanent secretary Karega Mutahi who said that
grabbers of school land had no justification to resist
repossession.
Kabete MP Paul Muite confirmed he
would this morning lead residents to repossess land grabbed from
the Kikuyu Catholic Church. But Ntonyiri MP Maoka Maore said the
order was a recipe for anarchy and accused the government of
working against the rule of law.
Lands and Housing permanent
secretary Erastus Mwongera has issued a circular telling schools
and other institutions to seize land that they had lost illegally
or irregularly.
Mr Mwongera told the institutions
not to wait for the government to repossess the land for them, but
asked them to seek help from the provincial administration to
reclaim their land.
The circular from the PS was in
line with recommendations of the Ndung'u Report on illegal and
irregular land allocations which was released on January 5.
The LSK chairman, Mr Tom Ojienda,
termed the Government's order illegal and unconstitutional.
"It surprising the government
is acting like a gangster and behaves as if it does not respect
the rule of law," he said.
He said the order should be ignored,
as it was against the provisions of Section 75 of the Constitution
which spells out the right to own property.
The government, he said, cannot
proceed on the basis of the Ndung'u land report to repossess
grabbed land.
The report was compiled without
inviting the people to whom the land was allotted to explain or
defend their claim. This, he said, amounted to condemning people
without hearing them.
The government should respect the
rule of law and the title deeds issued by its agents. "Once a
title is issued, it should be respected," he said.
"I am surprised that the
government can actually advocate chaos; it needs to respect the
rule of law," said the LSK chairman.
Kenya Episcopal Conference chairman
Bishop Cornelius Korir warned that leaving the repossession of
grabbed land to individuals could lead to chaos.
Bishop Korir, who is also the head
of the Eldoret Catholic Diocese, said: "There are laws that
should be followed in the process. If you ask individuals to
repossess the land, they will fight."
But the Kitale Catholic Diocese
Justice and Peace Commission co-ordinator Father Gabriel Dolan
asked Lands and Housing minister Amos Kimunya to amend land laws
to empower institutions to recover land grabbed from them.
Fr Dolan also proposed that the
minister forms a tribunal to review land title documents "as
recommended by the Ndung'u Report". The cleric said he was
happy that the government had finally acted on "what we have
campaigned for for long".
Education permanent secretary
Karega Mutahi said his ministry had forwarded to the ministry of
Lands details of schools which had lost land fraudulently. He told
the Sunday Nation that many schools had lost land through
illegal allocations. Such land should be repossessed without
opposition.
"Public land allocated to an
institution belongs to that institution. I don't expect anybody to
take a rungu and fight," he said.
The PS regretted that some schools
did not have title deeds for the land they occupied.
The Institute of Surveyors of
Kenya, while supporting the repossession move, warned of potential
violence.
The organisation's chairman, Mr
Reginald Okumu, said the government should have adopted a legal
approach through existing land tribunals to effect the order.
"What complicates the issue is
that the government has allowed the institutions to use force to
get the land back. Kenyans are in for chaotic scenes, especially
if the police will be used to effect it," said Mr Okumu.
Mr Maore said the approach
advocated by the Government would create avenues for extortion as
people could easily bribe officials to maintain their grabbed
property.
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