- Thousands of Nairobi residents living or operating business on land meant for public utilities face evictions.
- Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) boss Mohamed Badi yesterday revealed to a Senate committee that the entity in collaboration with other agencies have pending evictions across the 17 sub-counties.
Image: EZEKIEL AMING'A
Thousands of city residents living or operating businesses on land meant for public utilities will be evicted, Nairobi Metropolitan Services director general Mohamed Badi has said.
The NMS boss yesterday told senators that the agency, working under a multiagency committee, has many other pending evictions to carry out across all the city's 17 subcounties.
Those targeted have encroached on public lands such as road reserves and sewer-lines
Illegal structures put up on public land or reserves and mechanics operating garages standing on public land among other illegal structures will be evicted.
The revelations emerged during a meeting of the NMS director general with a senate committee over the evictions and demolitions in Pumwani and Eastleigh areas.
Badi appeared before the Senate’s Devolution and Intergovernmental Relations committee that is investigating the evictions and demolitions of houses.
The buildings are meant for doctors and nurses working at the Pumwani Maternity Hospital and Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company staff.
The lot was evicted from their quarters after the parcels were controversially allocated to private developers.
Some of the units were built using a loan secured by the government from the World Bank.
The occupants were removed on the night of July 7, 2021 by tens of police officers and NMS officials who had landed on their quarters with heavy machines.
The team was effecting a court order secured by a private developer who had been controversially allocated the land by the defunct Nairobi city council.
Badi sought to absolve his entity from the demolition activities.
He laid the blame on the regional security and intelligence committee that determines which court orders on evictions are to be effected.
The multi-agency task force is chaired by regional commissioner with top county officers sitting in it.
"NMS did not evict any person from the said land nor did it participate in the eviction exercise.There is a committee that sits to determine the operation," Badi said.
"I am sure they have standard operating procedures but if you ask me I am not involved in that operation.”
Badi had a hard time explaining that NMS officers were not part of the taskforce that carries out evictions that are mostly illegal.
“I think you are struggling too much to wash your hands off this matter.What we are asking is not just about your personal culpability," committee chairman Moses Kajwang (Homa Bay) said.
"We are asking what are the steps, what is the best practice for carrying out these demolitions, we are not trying to fix you."
Badi said most of the land problems stemmed from irregular and illegal allocations that include multiple allocations by the defunct council.
Areas targeted for demolitions include illegal structures encroaching on Trans Mara printers at Aerodrome road in Nairobi West, Lang'ata subcounty.
Upcoming slum dwellings at Ole Sereni area along Mombasa road will also be cleared.
In Embakasi, illegal structures along the perimeter wall of East African School of Aviation and illegal structures at Karsang land along Manyanja road within Umoja will be removed.
Structures along Kenya Builders and Concrete Company Limited perimeter wall and surrounding areas of Kware and Pipeline are targeted.
In Mathare, illegal containers placed at Huruma play ground by CBOs are expected to be removed in an area, the reports says, is the only remaining place that can hold national or major functions.
Illegal structures in Kiamaiko are also expected to be demolished.
The senators asked Badi on behalf of the multi-agency task force to ensure they put in place standard operating procedures and issue notices before effecting the evictions.
“It will be foolhardy to say that evictions will never be done. People encroach and the city needs some order," Nairobi Senator Johnson Sakaja said.
"But we just need to establish that certain protocols should be set in terms of notice to the persons affected and the time it is done."
(Edited by Francis Wadegu)