[Source: Daily Nation, by George Munene]
The Senate Committee on Lands, Environment and Natural Resources has said it will recommend that thousands of farmers who grow rice in the expansive Mwea Irrigation Scheme get title deeds.
The committee, sitting at the Wangu’ru National Irrigation Board offices in Kirinyaga County on Tuesday, noted that the farmers have been struggling to get the documents in order to become legal land owners and they must be assisted to get them.
But the committee said the farmers will get conditional title deeds so as to protect the giant scheme which generate Sh8 billion every season from collapsing.
The committee sought views from the farmers after Mr Kibiru petitioned the Senate seeking to have them given title deeds so as to become legal owners of the rice fields.
Committee Chairman Mwangi Githiomi said the farmers should get the documents so as to access bank loans for development purposes.
Farmers complained that they have been tenants since 1958 and that they should now be issued with title deeds.
Farmers have been agitating for the withdrawal of the board from the scheme so that they can be independent rice growers.
They said that when the government took over the fields for rice farming and research from the community, it promised to hand it back after 20 years.
The farmers said that twenty years are now over yet the government is yet to move out of the scheme, which is the largest in East and Central Africa.
In 1998, the farmers rebelled against the scheme’s board, accusing it of exploitation and refusing to vacate the land and attempted to take over the rice farms by force.
[Full article: Daily Nation, by George Munene]
