Embu denounces ‘fake’ Mwea Trust Land beneficiaries list

The County Government of Embu has disowned a list of beneficiaries of the Mwea Trust Land reportedly generated by the office of Mbeere South Member of Parliament, Mutava Musyimi.

Lands, Water, Environment and Natural Resources County Executive Committee member, Josphat Kithumbu, trashed the list stating that it was not authentic and could not be relied upon to map out the beneficiaries of the controversial settlement scheme and urged residents of Mwea to completely ignore it as it “was engineered by rumour mongers”.

Responding to queries from a section of the Members of the County Assembly, Kithumbu confirmed being in possession of the said list, but sought to affirm that the original list bore the signatures of the Mbeere South Sub County Administrator, the Chairman of the County Land Management Board and stamped by the National Lands Commission (NLC) on every page.

The CEC revealed that the ‘fake’ list had been the subject of a security meeting chaired by security Principal Secretary, Karanja Kibicho, on July 1^st, 2015 and investigations launched to establish the source and intention of the list.

He said several people had been questioned and recorded statements in connection to the list, but hinted that preliminary investigations had established that the list had been maliciously authored by unscrupulous elements with the intention of sparking skirmishes over the allotment of the land.

Kithumbu, however, declined to table the authentic list of the beneficiaries of the trust land, saying access to such government records was not expressly guaranteed, and that certain procedures must be adhered to before the information is made public.

He said he had no problem tabling all 7,232 land searches and green cards, but added that once a parcel of land is registered under the Land Act Cap 300, any record of the entries could only be acquired at a fee of Ksh 520. He said he would table the parcel numbers if he was facilitated with a budget of Ksh 3.8 million to get the searches from the National Land Commission.