Government revoke retired president Uhuru’s order in Ruai dumpsite saga
The national government has revoked an earlier order by former president Uhuru Kenyatta to include two parcels of land in the Dandora Waster and Water treatment plant by setting aside 2,600 acres of land from the Nairobi wastewater treatment plant.
In a gazette notice by Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki, he excluded the land parcel from the Dandora waste plant.
The move to exclude the land registered as LR12979/3 which totals 404.58 hectares and LR 12979/4 measuring 650.02 hectares overturns the notice by the former interior Cabinet Fred Matiang’i of July 2020.
In the notice by Matiang’i, he indicated that the land was part of the treatment plant.
“The expression in the schedule that reads ‘L.R No 12979 a public utility land for Nairobi sewer treatment plant’ to read ‘a subdivision of L.R No 12979 being L.R 12979/1/R deposited in the survey records office at Nairobi’ to read ‘Subdivisions L.R 12979/3 measuring 404.58 hectares and L.R no 12979/4 measuring 650.02 hectares are excluded from the Dandora waste and water treatment plant (RUAI) protected area order 2020.” The notice read.
Over forty bulldozers under heavy police protection brought down the structures erected on the parcel of land during the eviction.
A fifty feet with ditch was then dug in the area which the Uhuru administration said was meant to bar encroachment and grabbing.
The East Park police station was also demolished during the eviction despite them being the ones in charge of the guard during the eviction.
The government was keen on consolidating the original land which measured 5,319 hectares though it emerged that in 1986, part of the land had been transferred to the Settlement Fund Trust which had led to a tussle.
Part of the land was holding squatters displaced from the 2007/8 post-election violence and they were among the people evicted.
The land which has been a center of court battles was taken over by the government in 2020 where several families were evicted at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a move that sparked conversations amongst human rights organizations.
In 2013, governor Evans Kidero allowed Renton Company Limited to put up a mixed-use development on the parcel a move which was opposed by the squatters who sued the company to stop their eviction from the land.
Magereza Sacco failed in their attempt to buy the land after they were unable to give a deposit pay of 300 million which had been requested.
The other 1600-acre portion is registered to Offshore Trading Company owned by former Lugari MP Cyrus Jirongo.
The company had used the property as security in its loan taken from the Postbank Credit Limited which collapsed and is now under the Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation which still holds the title deed of the Offshore Company over the defaulted loan.
The company sued KDIC in 2014 to stop it from auctioning the property to recover the loan.
