The National Assembly has given City Hall six months to facilitate the issuance of 271 lease documents for Embakasi West residents forwarded to it by two law firms.
The residents had petitioned Parliament through their MP George Theuri about City Hall's failure to issues title deeds for a tenancy scheme dating back to 1976.
The National Assembly Committee on Lands has now ordered that the lease documents prepared by that M/S Musyoka Annan & Company Advocates and M/S Mbugua, Atudo & Macharia advocates are finalised.
The Committee report was tabled in Parliament on April 30.
M/S Musyoka Annan & Company Advocates prepared 174 lease documents that were pending execution and sealing by the county lands office.
The county administration has also been ordered to secure six head titles that are currently in the custody of M/S Musyoka Annan & Company Advocates
Embakasi West MP George Theuri told the Star yesterday that all he wanted was justice to his residents.
“A lot of money has already been spent by the concerned authorities and its only prudent that landowners were given the title deeds. They have been oppressed for long but no hope is lost,” he said.
Committee chair Rachel Nyamai had observed that despite M/S Musyoka & Annan Company Advocates severally communicating with City Hall, no action had been taken.
City Hall had said it was not aware that the law firm had prepared and issued 822 title deeds to plot owners in Umoja One and that 174 lease documents were waiting for their action since 2012.
“The agreement for the purchase of the said houses stipulated that after full payment of the purchase fee, each owner was supposed to be issued with a title deed,” reads the report.
The petitioners were allocated houses by the then City Council of Nairobi under Umoja Tenant Purchase Scheme in 1976.
However, the beneficiaries of the scheme were not issued with the title deeds even after paying the purchase fee.
Further, the then City Council of Nairobi had requested each owner to pay Sh10,016 through M/S Musyoka Annan & Company Advocates in 1993-1994 to facilitate the issuance of the title deeds
The conveyancing fee was later increased to Sh55,000. But the petitioners were ( last year required by the county to pay Sh30,000 through M/S Mbugwa Atundo & Macharia Company Advocates to facilitate the same.
The committee noted with concern that the petitioners had incurred a huge cost in paying for the processing of title deeds.
“They paid for the processing of similar lease documents thrice, totalling to Sh95,016, yet for years the petitioners have remained without title documents to their lands," reads the report.
In May 2019, Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko had said his administration will conduct an audit to identify the genuine landowners and weed out land grabbers from the list of beneficiaries.
(edited by O. Owino)
