Lands Cabinet Secretary Faridah Karoney has presided over land dialogue forum in Turkana to facilitate land registration.
Karoney said the two-day meeting is aimed at fast tracking the process of adjudicating and registering the unregistered community land in Turkana.
"About 70% of land in Kenya falls under the category of community land and the government has made progress in completing the registration process of quiet a number of them," the CS said.
She said the process was in line with the Community Land Act of 2016 and the subsequent regulations of 2017.
CS Karoney said community engagement is often the most difficult due to emerging issues as she lauded Turkana for taking a step in the right direction.
She said that matters relating to land Governance and Management should continuously be part of public discourse as a way of ensuring that the common man is properly sensitised moving forward.
Esther Lokwei, the County Executive for Lands said that the dialogue would be escalated downwards to the subounty, ward, village and the community level in due course to reach all residents of Turkana.
Lokwei noted that the county lands department was working with office of the County Attorney as a way of ensuring that the legal issues were expertly unpackaged and emerging concerns addressed within the confines of the law.
Erastus Ethekon the county attorney said that his department would see to it that the sensitisation package was intentionally designed and delivered to enhance knowledge of community land laws and the existing legal framework supporting the same.
“Turkana was 13% of the country’s' land mass and most of it was actually unregistered community land hence the need to speed up the process.”
He said that the eventual decision of the model to be used will be arrived at with the community after the sensitisation exercise.
He said that the messaging would also include the impact of other relevant laws on classification of lands in Kenya.
Richard Lokaale, a representative of the civil societies taking part in the process lauded the County for the move.
He noted that further delay would have exposed the Turkana community land to more threats especially along the borders with neighbouring local and International borders.
