A public school in Murang’a County is seeking the government’s intervention to save part of its compound.
The school acquired the land from the owner about 20 years ago but he was never compensated, and courts have ruled it should revert to him.
Technology Primary School has been fighting in court to keep the land from its original owner, Julius Munjuga, but lost the case twice.
Munjuga says the school took the land from him without any compensation and he is now claiming it back.
The school’s board of management chairperson, Harrison Mwangi, explained it was started in 1983 by the Murang’a College of Technology (now Murang’a University of Technology) as a nursery school for its staffers.
During a prize giving ceremony in 1990, a district commissioner observed that the school’s compound was too congested and wrote to the clerk of Murang’a Municipal Council to help the school get extra land.
The clerk wrote to several individuals neighbouring the school asking them to relinquish their land and have a similar allocation in the neighborhood.
Correspondences in possession of the school indicate that the Kenya Industrial Estates received compensation for two of its parcels that were taken over by the school just next to Murang’a Sports Club.
The council also wrote to Munjuga requesting for his co-operation in 1990.
The council afterwards wrote to the school claiming it that it had acquired two extra acres that became the institution’s playground.
But Munjuga came out in 2009 saying he still possessed lease documents over 0.104 hectares being used by the school.
Munjuga wrote to the Murang’a Town Clerk seeking clarification because he was verbally informed that his land was taken over by the school.
“This information surprised me because up to this moment, plot no. 11/257 is shown in your records as belonging to me and I have been paying rates for the plot all over the years… The purpose of this letter is to find out what happened and if the plot was exchanged for another one,” Munjuga wrote.
But when the school published a notice of completion of its development plan and started the process of acquiring a title deed for its land in September 2012, Munjuga filed a suit in Kerugoya land and environment court.
Munjuga won the case in 2017 and the school filed an appeal the same year which the developer also won in September last year.
Mwangi said the school had approached the county government to acquire an alternative land for Munjuga as was the original plan but the process is yet to be concluded.
“We are appealing to the county government to hasten the process so that this situation is resolved as fast as possible without interrupting learning,” he said.