- National Land Commission officials toured the vast land to establish what should be ceded
- NLC's Historical Land Injustices Secretariat head Edmond Gichuru led the tour
Image: Handout
Squatters living in the disputed Kakuzi land in Murang'a county have been given hope of finally getting resettled.
This is after the National Land Commission officials toured the vast land to establish what should be ceded.
NLC's Historical Land Injustices Secretariat head Edmond Gichuru led the tour.
The team recorded historical land injustice claims against the multinational agricultural firm.
NLC said it will start preparing determinations for all the claims.
Residents want Kakuzi to cede 14,000 acres.
Led by chairperson Murigi Njogu, they said the commission has no choice but to give them the idle land since most of them are squatters in their ancestral land.
“The officials have toured the Kakuzi land and established that thousands of acres lie idle and that we expect in their recommendations, they will force the company to cede the land to squatters. We have suffered a lot of historical injustices in the hands of the company and we hope this will soon end,” he said.
Murigi cautioned NLC against engaging with the wrong parties, urging them to collaborate with local administrators to obtain an accurate list of those affected.
He accused Kakuzi of falsely claiming that there is no idle land within the more than 33,000 acres they occupy and stressed on the importance of avoiding a repeat of past mistakes.
“NLC should not allow the Murang’a government to manage the allocation of the land if ceded. We don’t want a repeat of the Delmonte’s ceded land saga that ended up in the hands of the county government rather than the rightful beneficiaries,” Murigi said.
Margret Syombua, a squatter, shared painful testimonies of how Kakuzi guards cannot allow her to fetch firewood in the forest.
She said they are also not allowed to bury their loved ones or even farm the land.