The government has been asked to compensate 8 settlers who were shot by police during land ownership chaos at the disputed Mwea-settlement-scheme nine months ago.
Councils of elders of various communities who live in the 44,000 acres of the land in Mbeere South Sub-county that has been under dispute for decades asked the government to pay damages to the victims who they said were maimed by the bullets before one died later.
Nyangi ndiiriri council of elders representing the Embu community people, the Mwea council of elders and the Kirinyaga council of elders said since the eight settlers were shot by the police in various places of the scheme they have become disabled and one family lost their member.
Speaking during a meeting held at the Scouts center in Embu Town the elders led by Nyangi Ndiiriri council of elders chairman Andrew Ireri and Mwea council of elders organizing secretary John Musembi and elder John Kathangu they said the victims have been facing untold sufferings since the incident.
They at the same time asked the land and the interior Cabinet secretaries Farida Koroney and Dr Fred Matinag’i respectively who suspended the exercise of settling land owners who had been allocated the land before the clash exploded to lift the suspension and start sub-division afresh.The elders asked the governments to identify all the settlers who are physically living in the settlement scheme by marking out their houses and families and list them down for allocation of the land before anybody else from outside can be considered for allocation.
“The government should form community committees of the squatters living in the settlement scheme to identify the residents of the area who are supposed to benefit from the land. This was not done before its division into 9232 pieces of land and this contributed to the chaos,” said Ireri
The elders said some of the people who were given the responsibility of identifying the beneficiaries of the land allocated themselves large chunks of it, their relatives, civil servants and politicians and outsiders.
The elders said they will soon organize a delegation to the Embu county Governor Martin Wambora to impress upon him the need of start distribution of the land afresh so that those who have allocated themselves large pieces can forfeit them and those who were skipped while they live there can be considered .
Matiang'i and Koroney suspends the Mwea settlement exercise on April 19 last year a day after clashes left 8 people with gunshot wounds after protesters prevented beneficiaries of the land being shown their land.
One of the victims of the shooting Kennedy Mutua from Kamwea who was shot in the stomach died three weeks later on April 18 died at Kerugoya Level 5 Hospital.