- He says government plans to lease land to Busia Sugar Industries for 50 years.
- Says no development on the land can take place without blessings of the community.
Image: /FILE
The government is planning to lease 843 acres of public land to a private sugar company in Busia county, activist Okiya Omtatah has said.
He said the government intends to lease the land at Nasewa in Matayos constituency to Busia Sugar Industries for the development of sugarcane for 50 years without involving the community.
Omtatah argues that the land was set aside for value addition by the local community and that any development can only take place with the blessings of the community.
The activist has written to the Treasury, which is the custodian of the land, threatening to move to court to stop the plans by the government.
Omtatah fought a six-year court battle to wrest the land from a private company that irregularly acquired it from the local community in the early 1990s.
“I will personally contest such plans in the High Court at your risk as to costs for orders stopping the same,” Omtatah says in his letter dated May 6.
He says the High Court in its ruling on July 31, 2018, put a caveat on the title deed of the Nasewa Nucleus that it be used specifically for the initial purpose of constructing a sugar factory to benefit sugarcane farmers in the border county.
Omtatah's letter is copied to the National Land Commission, Busia county government, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, the Attorney General and DCI's Land Fraud Investigation Unit.
Efforts to obtain a comment from the BSI management on the matter bore no fruit. Managing director Ali Taib neither answered calls nor responded to text messages to his mobile phone.
The government acquired the land from residents of Nasewa under compulsory government acquisition in the 1990s.
Last year, the National Land Commission issued a new title deed bearing a different name for the land.
Omtatah is pushing the Director of Public Prosecutions and Directorate of Criminal Investigations to investigate and establish the whereabouts of Sh8 billion public funds meant to set up a sugar factory in Busia county.
Edited by Henry Makori