Kisii municipality is set to demolish all irregularly built structures in a bid to reorganise the town by standardising all buildings for public safety purposes.
In a notice issued last week, owners of buildings within the municipality that did not follow the right building plan approval procedures are staring at losses as the county government plans to undertake major demolitions.
The county issued a public notice requiring all building owners to submit their approval documentation and ensure the right procedures are followed in putting up buildings.
The notice listed several owners that were required to submit their approved documents for verification and confirmation.
Lands, Physical Planning and Urban Development county executive Walter Okibo, said the municipality is among the top leading towns that have experienced numerous collapse of buildings leading to loss of lives and property due to non-compliance with the development plan approval.
“Sadly, we have so many developments without professional and procedural approvals as per the law, besides witnessing stalled buildings within the municipality for many years,” he said.
The stalling ultimately caused a lot of damage to the structural strength of the buildings which are prone to collapse.
“We are convinced these are among the reasons we have had some buildings collapsing in the past and we want to bring this to an end,” Okibo said.
He further said that the responsibility to protect residents lies with the county government and that the administration will not spare any building owner who had not followed the right plan approval procedures.
“We are keen on invoking Section 72 of the Physical and Land Use Planning Act No. 13 of 2019 that gives the county government the powers to issue an enforcement notice to owners, occupiers, agents or developers who did not follow the right procedures, upon the lapse of the 21 days notice we recently issued, ” Okibo said.
He explained that after the lapse of the compliance notice, the county will then require all the non-compliant developers to demolish their buildings and restore the land to its original state at their own cost.
Okibo urged the concerned developers and members of the public to support the initiative which is aimed at restoring sanity in the development of the Kisii municipality.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris