CS Alice Wahome promises to ensure Nairobi public schools get title deeds
She says her ministry is ready to get back grabbed public property from private developers if documents are availed to her

School principals and head teachers in Nairobi and other regions facing land grabbing threats have been asked to submit the proper documents to the Ministry of Land, Public Works, housing, and Urban Development.
Cabinet Secretary for Lands Alice Wahome said her ministry is ready to get back grabbed public property from private developers if documents are availed to her.
“I call upon every principal and head teacher and the community at large who knows that their school property or land is on the verge of being grabbed or grabbed already to ensure they put documents together and to my attention,” The CS stated.
She promised to form teams for the different regions across the country that will help in ensuring the grabbed school properties are got back.
“We will put teams together in the different eight regions to ensure that the grabbed school properties are taken back from the grabbers,” she said.
Wahome put on the spot a private developer who is fighting for Lavington Primary School land, adding that she will be at the school to issue a new title deed and ensure the land is back.
This comes almost two years after Dagoretti North Member of Parliament Beatrice Elachi questioned why Nairobi City County Governor Johnson Sakaja issued a title deed for the Lavingtone primary that did not indicate the whole 19.7 acres.
Even though the City administrator promised to ensure the grabbed land is back, it is yet to be recovered as a private developer has erected structures on the said land.
Cases of public school land grabbing are very common in Nairobi County with some cases such as that of Langata Primary being one of the most documented as some senior government officials were mentioned in the case.
A past survey by Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) indicated that 70 percent of public schools’ land risk being grabbed.
As of November 2019, 70 per cent of the 32,354 public schools operating in Kenya did not have title deeds.
Another report by the Shule Yangu Alliance Campaign for 2020 indicates that more than 4,100 public schools have formally reported being at risk of being grabbed due to a lack of ownership documents
This means that over 22,000 schools countrywide do not have title deeds.
In 2018 the government introduced procedures that will ease the acquisition of title deeds by schools, but the move seems to have not eradicated the grabbing vice.