By Bida Elly David
The national ministry land, housing and public utilizes has warned citizens including armed forces against forceful grabbing of land across the country saying that anyone who shall attempt to act would not escape the law but face brutal justice.
This caution came amid the on-going syllogism on the draft land policy that has been taking long to be implemented due to long procedures.
The national and the state governments have severally been blamed of exercising injustices over unequal treatment amid allocation and allotment of land to citizens across the nation.
The ministry has been working on a national policy on land management and use for a long period of time pushing blames to the County’s state of instability.
The land policy act has been a document that remained on workout over the last ten years hanging for deliberations and implementation leaving passive drawbacks among residents.
Speaking to No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper, George Rithi Richard, the Director of land in the national ministry of land, housing and public utilities said that the issues concerning land grabbing has been common in the country where the poor are being overpowered by the claimed tycoons.
He said that they have registered number of cases from the people over the subject matter but due to the slow move of the land policy they could not tack the suspects.
George further poured blames onto the State Ministry of land and housing being the implementers of the land law against the crooks since the task of the national government was to formulate the laws.
He said that all the malpractices in the aforementioned ministries have been happening due to poor performance of the officers tasked to work in the land departments.
He said that the land policy has been hanging for the past ten years without deliberation due to the civil war and the pandemic.
“Off course anyone who tempers to grab land from other people is termed to be a criminal and deserves to be punished according to the constitution” he warned.
The Director of Land underlined that people fight to get business land forcefully without acquiring it from the right source.
“We are not going to leave these people unpunished once the policy is out. Over role in the national ministry is to formulate laws which are supposed to be implemented by the states but the states in most cases don’t perform,’’ he said
He further said that the on-going land disputes between the governments and the community was due to poor understanding that would have been handled in a friendly manner since community owns the land but regulated by the government.
“We don’t have problem with the community but the community has problems with us as government over the regulation of land allotment. The land policy document shall define and indicate the duties and responsibilities of bodies in charge of the land and how it should be used,’’ he said
Meanwhile, Morad Meseka, a lawmaker termed officers in the ministries of housing as criminals who deserved to be fired and replaced with immediate effect.
He even said that, the judiciary has been corrupted by number of lawyers whose ambition was to meet financial benefits through reach people.
Meseka called on total transformation of the land registry into better format through employment of right people in a right place not wrong people in right places.