NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 18 – Dagoretti North Member of Parliament Beatrice Elachi has called on the National Government to issue land titles belonging to public schools in Nairobi, a move she stated will prevent land grabbing.
Speaking during a press conference Wednesday, Elachi raised concerns over a piece of land belonging to Lavington Secondary School which she alleged has been grabbed.
An unknown developer has already erected a construction there.
“So, the best thing is government to give schools of Nairobi their tittle deeds so that they can be able to know where their boundaries are and how they plan for the school. This is the only girl’s school that I have now that can accommodate children from Kawangware because most of the schools I have in my constituency are National Schools,” Elachi said.
“I would really plead with the government; we work together and see how we can safeguard schools land from land grabbers.”
The legislator vowed to deal with land grabbers in her constituency saying it is leaving schools and students disadvantaged and without even enough playground.
“The fight we will start is with these new developers because you cannot even imagine that someone would just come to a school like this one and just decide to put a fence on the road where students were last term passing through. This one we will fight. The rest if you know you have a part of the Lavington Primary or Secondary, the best thing you can do is work closely with the school because you have a title but the main title is still there,” she said.
Elachi spoke shortly after issuing bursary forms to her constituents.
Cases of public school’s land grabbing are very common in Nairobi County with some cases such as that of Langata Primary being one of the most documented as some senior government officials were mentioned in the case.
A recent survey by Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) indicated that 70 percent of public schools land risk being grabbed.
As of November 2019, 70 percent of the 32,354 public schools operating in Kenya did not have title deeds.
According to a report dubbed ‘A Handbook for Public Schools Land Defenders, Shule Yangu Alliance Campaign 2020, further showed that more than 4,100 public schools have formally reported being at risk of being grabbed due to lack of ownership documents
This means 22,648 schools countrywide do not have title deeds.
In 2018 the government introduced procedures that will ease the acquisition of title deeds by schools, but the move seems to have not eradicated the grabbing vice.
