State has neglected us, starving Mau evictees continue to cry out

Mau Forest evictees living in camps for the Internally Displaced Persons at Konoin constituency, Bomet County have accused the Government of neglecting them.

Representatives of the more than 900 evictees from Kusumek and Chebugen camps, said despite promises to compensate them immediately the Jubilee administration took power, there is no hope of them being resettled any time soon. Led by their spokesman William Cheruiyot, they said their families were starving and their their children malnourished.

Mr Cheruiyot said many of them go without food for weeks because no relief food is forthcoming from the Jubilee Government. He said the last batch of food sent to the camps was during the coalition government under the then special programmes, and that was two years ago.

“It is difficult to think that some people can go without food for as many as three weeks but that is the grim reality occasioned by a Government that has refused to compensate us so that we can move out and start life afresh,” he said at a press conference in Bomet town.

Cheruiyot, who is the chairman of the Kusumek camp, was accompanied by his Chebugen counterpart, Patrick Kirui and said many of the evictees were living in tattered tents, exposing them to health dangers. “It is raining now and I am sure a caring Government cannot sit back and watch its people suffer because they do not have shelter,” said Kirui.

He said the Government should expedite the compensation process to enable them move out of the squalid conditions and start life afresh. Kirui questioned the Government's promises during the campaigns, and decried that leaders had used them as a stepping stone to office.