A parliamentary committee is trying to resolve a 23-year land dispute between the Kenya Forest Service and squatters. Four groups are battling the agency for the 419-acre Kamiti/Anmer whose value is estimated at Sh 12 billion. Each of the four groups of squatters as well as Kenya Forest Service (KFS) have laid claim to the parcel.
Kamiti Anmer Development Association, Kamiti Forest Squatters Association (KAFSA), Muungano Wa Kamiti Society and Kamiti Anmer Squatters Welfare Group all claim the land belongs to them. However, KFS has maintained that the land is its property as it was never degazetted from being a forest after it was allegedly handed over to the squatters.
The National Assembly Land Committee, chaired by Kitui South MP Rachel Nyamai, toured the farm on a fact-finding mission. The visit came months after one of the squatter groups, KAFSA, petitioned Parliament, asking that its members be permanently settled on the land it claimed the Government allocated it in 1992.
The group told Parliament that its members were allocated the land after they were displaced from their homes during the 1992 tribal clashes. The squatters asked Parliament to order KFS to keep off the land. KAFSA chairman Njoroge Wakaba asked the committee to help resolve the row.
The group told the MPs that in 1994, the then Central PC directed the defunct Kiambu County Council to have them settled on the land, but the order was ignored.
[Article source: The Standard, by Kamau Maichuhie]
