Njiru MCA Carrington Gicunji asks government to intervene in Kirima land saga
Njiru Member of County Assembly (MCA) Carrington Gicunji has implored on the government to rescue more than 300 households facing eviction from the Kirima family land.
The MCA, in an interview with Nairobi News, stressed that the government should come with a plan such as the one that was used years ago to bring to an end the dispute that had surrounded the Waitiki Farm in Mombasa County for many years.
Mr Gichunji asked the government to consider the fact that the residents had spent more than three decades at the contested land.
“There has been so much development there for the last 40 years, and huge tracks of land are being owned by certain people who are now emerging to claim that the land belongs to them, yet people have stayed there for more than 35 years,” Mr Gichunji said.
He further explained that Kenyan law allows citizens to acquire and own land, through a freehold or a leasehold tenure.
“There is a law that says if you stay in one land undisturbed for more than 12 years, you can claim ownership of the land…this is too much on our side, and if what was applied in Waitiki Farm in Mombasa should be applied in Kirima land.”
Mr Gichunji has alleged that Njiru residents have been left for their own by the government, yet it swiftly acted and settled the Waitiki Farm dispute amicably by paying a certain amount of money.
This comes at a time when the Nairobi County Government has volunteered to mediate between the Kirima family and the residents to ensure that the issue is handled in harmony.
In the recent meeting with the two parties, Governor Johnson Sakaja said that having middlemen will make the process difficult since they also have their interests.
“For us, we are dealing with the family which the courts said are the owners. The owner is represented by the lawyers. These other people we don’t know who they are, they are not lawyers, they are not appointed agents,” Sakaja said when he met with the representatives of the family and the occupants.
The county also revealed that the majority of the squatters in Kirima land have paid for ownership, which needs a proper process of transferring the ownership.
“Let us not try and say that we pull them down completely, a good negotiation is where no one gets 100 percent of what they want and the other one gets zero, we want both sides to get something.”
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