By Franc Odhiambo

Many developments such as roads, electricity, telecommunications, water and sewerage continue to face challenges arising from lack of adequate land. The creation of land bank as proposed in the national lands policy, however, is seen a way forward.

While housing requires a single suitable sizeable land, other development programmes such as electricity, water, sewerage and telecommunication are linear and traverse long distances involving both public and private lands affecting many homes and a big population. This, in essence, calls for creation of a wayleave.

A wayleave is a space of land acquired for laying pipeline, drain, sewer, electricity and communication cables or wire on pylons. According to the Wayleaves Act Cap 292 Laws of Kenya, the Government may create a wayleave into, through, over or under any lands whatsoever but may not in doing so interfere with any existing building.

Whenever the Government intends to create a wayleave, it gives a notice of one month describing the nature of the intended work and copies served to the interested parties.

Any objection raised on the intended work should be served on the district commissioner of the area within a month. The intended work shall not commence on the particular parcel of land whose owner has raised objection without the sanction of the minister concerned.

Compensation

The Government shall make compensation to all damages done on any tree or crops destroyed. If a disagreement arises as to the amount of compensation to be paid or whom to be paid to, the interested party may apply to the district commissioner who shall award the compensation as he/she thinks reasonable and the award, subject to appeal to the provincial commissioner, shall be final.

The nature of many projects, which require wayleaves indicate that they are more suitable if they follow the alignment of existing road or railway network for ease of accessibility and maintenance as long as the topography is suitable. Sometimes, due to poor topography and long distances involved, wayleaves may be created away from existing road alignment cutting across various public and private property.

Potential targets

It is therefore important for land owners whose property front major highways and other access roads to bear in mind that the properties are potential target for wayleave creation. When developing such properties they should make sure they leave adequate frontage space for anticipated future wayleaves developments.

Once a wayleave is created, nobody is supposed to use it for any other purpose, which might interfere with its activities and functions.

Cases abound of people building houses and doing unlawful business on wayleaves, such as building under electricity power lines or over oil pipeline and sewerage systems. Such people cannot sue for damages in case of damages or fire disasters.

The writer is a survey and mapping professional