• On February 23, Otachi wrote to Lenku and proposed to mediate over the land rate dispute between Tata and the county government.
• The governor responded and told NLC to keep off the dispute as the matter was not the mandate of the Commission.
Image: KURGAT MARINDANY.
Governor Joseph Ole Lenku and the National Land Commission chairman Gershom Otachi are at loggerheads over the unresolved Tata Chemicals Magadi Ltd land rates.
Tata Chemicals Magadi Ltd stopped paying land rates for the land they occupy around Lake Magadi after Lenku’s administration increased the fees without consulting the soda-ash mining company in 2018.
On February 23, Otachi wrote to Lenku and proposed to mediate over the land rate dispute between Tata and the county government.
“The NLC has been approached by Tata Chemicals Magadi Ltd on several broad issues relating to various parcels of land they hold in the county, including matters of tenure and land rates,” Otachi’s letter read in part.
The NLC boss said in his letter that, to enable the Commission make an informed decision and advice appropriately on the matter, he scheduled a meeting for Monday, 27 at 11am.
The meeting will take place at NLC offices in Nairobi where the NLC boss will be expecting Lenku and his three CEC members of Finance, Land and Environment.
Otachi said he expects the county ministers to come along for the meeting with relevant documents on the matter.
But while responding to Otachi’s letter, governor Lenku told him to keep off the dispute as the matter was not the mandate of the Commission.
Lenku declined to attend the Nairobi meeting.
The governor wrote back to Otachi saying, "I regret that your letter dated February 23 does not encapsulate the specific intervention of your Commission in the matter as spelt out in Article 67 of the Constitution."
He told Otachi that the land rate dispute between the county and Tata company was settled by the high court in petition Number 2 of 2019 (Tata Chemicals Vs CGK).
The governor claimed the High Court upheld the county’s constitutional power and right to levy rates through the Kajiado Finance Act, 2014 and the Kajiado County Rating Act, 2016.
Lenku told Otachi that Tata Chemicals was granted a lease by the county government for the public land they occupy which is now no longer public property by dint of the lease.
“The Constitution defines private land as consisting of land held by any person under leasehold tenure,” Lenku told the NLC boss in the letter.
The governor, therefore, said the NLC has no role in the fixing of rates as that is the preserve of the county government.
“Given the foregoing, and until you clarify the issues raised above, your intervention is declined,” Lenku told Otachi.
The county late last year slapped its unpaid land rates claim on 179,374 acres of land which did not include the 224, 992 acres of land occupied by the company under a lease that expires in 2053.
Tata insists that when they engaged the Kenyan government on the lease, amount agreed was Sh2,000 per acre and not the Sh10,000 levied by Lenku's administration.
A document by the director general of revenue, Vera Moraa, shows that the county government's claim stands at Sh11.4 billion since 2016, which the county now demands before they engage with the investor on any other matter.