Plans to issue more than 100,000 title deeds to residents of Nakuru by June this year received a major boost after Lands CS Farida Karoney waived all land processing fees in the county.
The CS said this will make it easy and cheap for families to acquire title deeds.
“Naivasha which has tens of land disputes should get 30,000 of these titles,” Karoney said at the launch of a one-month land clinic in Naivasha.
The lakeside town leads in land disputes in the county.
The CS also announced that all land documents will from next January, be digitised, adding that this would reduce cases of corruption in the department.
“We shall start with a pilot programme in December and later register all public land including that belonging to schools, hospitals, and the army,” she said.
She at the same time put her officers on notice, noting that some worked with cartels to defraud the public, with widows been the most affected.
She said they were working with the Judiciary to address the issue of land succession as it now took a long time, giving the cartels a chance to strike.
“We have reduced the process of registering land from 73 to 12 days and by next year this will come down to five days,” she promised.
Naivasha MP Jane Kihara, who had organised the clinic, termed the land office in Naivasha as the major contributor to the land disputes in the town.
Kihara accused some officers of working with the cartels to rob the poor, adding that double allocation was the order of the day in the office.
“We have so many land challenges in Naivasha caused by land officers and some unscrupulous surveyors. It is time action was taken against them,” she said.
Land CAS Gideon Mung’aro put on notice those who had grabbed public land, disclosing that the DCI and EACC had been involved in dealing with the matter.
“Two weeks ago, we and EACC handed back public land that had been grabbed in Nakuru and we are in the process of recovering more,” he said.
Others who spoke were MPs Simon King’ara (Ruiru), Samuel Gachobe (Subukia), Francis Kuria (Molo) and Land chief officer Judyleah Waihenya.
