Minister asks Parliament to adopt new land policy

By Gakuu Mathenge

Lands Minister James Orengo is optimistic the House will approve and adopt a sessional paper on a new land policy, once it reopens.

The sessional paper, which proposes new radical legal tools to unlock hurdles the Judiciary has been unable to overcome in recovery of illegally acquired public land, is ready and awaits presentation before the House.

It includes provisions to lift the veil of secrecy behind the ownership of the 10-mile strip at the Coast, currently owned by Arab absentee landlords.

The indigenous Coast residents have been squatters on their ancestral land for more than a century.

The policy proposes this land be repossessed and given to proposed district and community land boards for distribution to residents, effectively granting the regional communities independence over their land, 46 years after independence.

Judiciary unhelpful

Orengo told a meeting of stakeholders on Wednesday that Judiciary has been unhelpful in reclaiming illegally allocated public land due to legal protection of the principle of the sanctity of the Title Deed, which tended to favour lawbreakers.

Citing a case in Eldoret, where a court upheld the principle of sanctity to title deed for a plot grabbed from the court compound, Orengo said the new law has proposals to repeal Cap 282 of Land Titles Act (1908), and creation of National Land Commission to take over inventory, custody and management of public land from the Commissioner of Lands once the new policy is adopted. The country has been struggling with the scam of land grabbing of public properties but efforts to recover them have been hampered by both lengthy and convoluted court cases, and laws that protect the first registration of title deed, regardless of method of acquisition.

Legal hurdles

Currently, the Government is struggling to recover hundreds of thousands of acres of the Mau forestland, with the prospects of being compelled to part with Sh38 billion to compensate title deed holders, although their method of acquisition has since been deemed irregular.

If the sessional paper is approved, the resultant National Land Commission will assume all management and resolution of the Mau Complex issue.

The chairman of a consortium of stakeholders, Mr Mwenda Makathimo, said Parliament would have a historic moment to "give the country a sound economic development footing and stability by adopting the policy".

Garsen MP and Narc-K Secretary-General Danson Mungatana called on Orengo to move constitutional amendments needed to effect the new land policy together with the sessional paper "so that we can deliver land reforms in one go, even if the constitutional review takes longer, or is stalled."

Land reforms was at the top of the Agenda Item Four of the National Accord signed by President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga. The two promised former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan they will support adoption of the sessional paper.