The remaining land owners along the Lamu Port Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport corridor project will not receive cash compensation if a proposal by the government is upheld.
Transport Principal secretary Wilson Nyakera yesterday said the government is considering allocating alternative land for those affected, to save it from payouts which will amount to billions of shillings.
“We are talking of billions of dollars and we do not have billions of dollars. Government has a lot of land, if I take away half an acre, I should be able to give you another half, one or two acres somewhere else,” he said.
The PS said the government spends billions of shillings on compensation even before it starts paying for the infrastructure itself, which is a burden.
Last year, the government paid out Sh1.5 billion to 146 land owners in Lamu county as compensation for the
Lapsset project.
This is 10 per cent of the reposessed land which was owned by private individuals.
Ninety per cent is government land.
“Public interests should override private interest. We need to rethink compensation plans for major projects. It should not be about people making money,” Nyakera said.
He was speaking in Nairobi yesterday during the release of the Standard Gauge Railway’s corporate social responsibility report.
Along the SGR route, the government has paid Sh12 billion for the land with the total expenditure capped at Sh30 billion, the PS said.
National Land Commission chairman Muhammad Swazuri outlined resistance to land acquisition, disputes on land ownership, lack of title deeds and evaluation of land as among the challenges in compensation programmes.
