Squatters want title deeds issued by Uhuru revoked

Women from Mwakirunge Settlement Scheme Phase II want 950 title deeds given to area residents revoked.

The squatters said some of the title deeds had anomalies while some beneficiaries did not know which plots had been allocated to them despite the Government giving them the titles. The scheme holds more than 2,000 families.

Speaking at a Mombasa hotel, the women said they were yet to be shown their plots since they received the title deeds three years ago. They claimed that some of the titles had been issued to a new set of people instead of those already occupying the land and that some squatters never got titles.

Some of the squatters received title deeds that did not bear their national identity card numbers while others had their names mixed up, they added.

They called for the immediate revoking of the titles and the appointment of a new team to spearhead the exercise to get rid of corrupt cartels they accused of allocating their land to “influential people”.

The squatters appealed to the National Land Commission (NLC) to intervene before the crisis deepened.

One of the beneficiaries, Mnyazi Saha Chula, described the distribution of title deeds as a recipe for chaos because some had not been shown their plots while others were allocated land far from where they had built houses.

“We have been advised to enter into agreements with the owners of the land where our houses stand but this has failed because most of them are strangers to the area. We are asking why there was such a mess in the allocations,” she said.

Ms Chula that most of her six adult children were not allocated land while the portion given to the family was less than an acre, although they previously occupied four acres.