Govt forms inter-ministerial committee to fight land grabbing Kaimenyi

Lands and Housing Cabinet Secretary Prof. Jacob Kaimenyi has announced that an inter-ministerial collaboration to deal with land grabbing in Kenya is at an advance stage.

This, he says, will help deal with the challenge of fake title deeds that hinder growth of the real estate market in the country.

Kaimenyi was speaking at a forum on the future of land, property and construction in Kenya early Thursday, where he also revealed that more than 60,000 title deeds lay uncollected in the lands registry offices all over the country.

Kaimenyi revealed that the Lands Ministry is still grappling with the issue of validity of title deeds in the hands of owners across the country.

Kaimenyi added that his Ministry has already established a computerized title deed issuance system, to ease land transactions across the country.

The CS also warned Kenyans against encroachment on private land, saying the Ministry will take stern action against such perpetrators amid a rise in land encroachment cases.

Lands Ministry PS Miriam El Maawy expressed disappointment that the Ministry was ranked the 3rd most corrupt after Interior and Health, in a survey by Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC).

Early March this year, the Lands Ministry completed the surveying of land and issuance of title deeds in Meru and Tharaka Nithi counties.

At the end of the exercise, 155,000 title deeds had been issued, but Kaimenyi said very few residents of the two counties had collected their title deeds.

It is alleged that some politicians had misled residents to believe that the titles could be fake while a few residents failed to collect the documents because of some of the levies charged.

January 2016, the government revoked the title deeds of more than 350,000 acres of irregularly acquired land in Lamu County.

According to CS Kaimenyi, the land, which compromises 12 parcels whose notice of revocation had expired, was returned to the county government for public use.