Owners of homes condemned by Environment CS Keriako Tobiko for encroaching on Ngong Forest land are nervous and indignant.
Tobiko has said the ministry will reclaim the forest land but the property owners say they did due diligence and are there legally.
Mohammed Simi, a property owner at Royal Park in Langata says some residents are staring at depression as a result of the news.
“Some of the residents within the park are 80-year-olds who had invested all their life saving in this neighbourhood and are made to go through this psychological trauma,” he said.
The former Isiolo county Lands executive wondered how the property can be illegal yet the government has been collecting land rates from them.
Simi said that the intended demolition is illegal as the property owners did due diligence before buying the property.
The neighbourhood has 420 houses built in a 24-acre piece of land adjacent to Langata cemetery.
Tobiko had warned that people should not expect compensation as they had acquired the land illegally
Abdi Zeila, another resident, asked the government to consult them before demolishing the houses estimated at Sh14 billion.
“70 percent of these properties are built on mortgage held by various commercial banks in the country.
“Destroying them is going to wreak havoc financially in a country that is already feeling the pinch of the coronavirus pandemic. More so, no one will pay mortgage for a house that has been demolished,” he said.
Zeila who chairs the community association recounted how he contacted various government offices before laying the foundation for his house.
“I bought my land in 2010 and it took me six months to pay in instalments at the time. The legal process took six months and further two years before I was able to raise the foundation for my house,” he said.
“We are a lawfully established community and rendering us homeless will be a travesty of justice, especially because we are completely innocent.”
Zeila urged the government to follow the chain of transaction to the end to establish the seller of the land and let them be prosecuted.
“It beats sense for the government to focus on the person at the tail end of the process yet some of us were teenagers when this transaction started and we had no reason to believe our land was illegal,” he said.
Other gated communities within Langata that could be demolished are Sun Valley phases 1 to 3, Langata View Apartments, St Mary Apartments, KMA Langata and Shalom Apartments.
“We have not received any notice from the government other than the social and mainstream media pronouncement from CS Tobiko saying he was going to fence in people dwelling within the forest land and cause them to become one ecosystem with the Nairobi National Park,” a source told the Star.
(edited by o. owino)
