Karoney says land reforms on course
Lands Cabinet Secretary Faridah Karoney has said her ministry has embarked on varied reforms geared at resolving historical land injustices and related problems that have bred conflicts among communities.
The reforms, she said include the national titling programme, digitised land records, decentralised land administration and introduced geo-referencing parcels of land.
“The majority of land related conflicts in Kenya is as a result of overlapping land rights, insecurity of tenure, inequity in access to and ownership of land, land scarcity and environmental stresses,” Karoney said in a report presented to the Senate by CAS Gideon Mung’aro.
The CS filed the detailed report to the Senate National Cohesion and Equal Opportunity committee.
Karoney said the reforms initiated 2018, started off with the formulation of a National Land Policy, which guided the framework required to address critical issues in the sector.
The Ministry, she disclosed, embarked on the implementation of the national land titling programme that targets to resolve long-standing land ownership disputes and uncertainties that have blocked landowners and businesses from accessing credit facilities.
“This is an intensive exercise, which involves verification of ownership of different types of land – pubic, community and private.”
The ministry has processed 454,990 title deeds out of which 116, 387 were from adjudication, 5,446 titles for informal settlements and 286,686 in county land registries.
Some 30,000 titles have been processed for Embakasi Ranching Company in Nairobi, 3, 322 for public institutions and 13, 149 leases in the last financial year.
“The rapid response programme has seen five million titles issued in the seven years since 2013,” she said.
