Kilifi County government will from next month ground break the construction of a one stop shop County headquarters that is geared towards saving the county millions of shillings in renting office spaces.
Governor Gideon Mung’aro said that the Ksh. 500 million project will be implemented on a seven-acre piece of land that was on Thursday repossessed from land grabbers.
Three acres of the land that is part of the Social Services department at Mabirikani area in Kilifi town had been grabbed by former and current government officers who had erected multi million shillings mansions and rental houses.
Some of the victims of the properties that were demolished by County enforcement officers were allegedly senior officers at the Kilifi Social Services department who upon retirement, they hived off part of the government land and allocated themselves.
“It is embarrassing that we are still renting houses for various departments, paying millions of shillings yet government officers have grabbed county government land. I will not tire until I repossess all grabbed land and there is already a Ksh. 500 million budget to construct the county headquarters so that we save the money we use in paying rent and use that money on development projects,” he said.
Mung’aro added that his administration will also compensate traders whose stalls were demolished along Kilifi towns streets to pave way for modern container shops.
“I will not even sympathize with these government land grabbers and the only people the county will compensate are small business people whose stalls we brought down so that we can install container shops for them,” he added.
The Kilifi County Executive Committee Member (CECM) for lands, energy, housing, physical planning and urban development Jane Kamto wondered how senior government officials managed to grab public land in their hands and even acquired title deeds.
“You cannot have a title deed resurrecting from the air which has no proper origin such as a sale agreement to show that it exchanged hands and some of the land which also have title deeds which is so embarrassing is government land, somebody has a title deed on government land and we wonder who issued such title deeds,” she said.
Residents of Mabirikani area, some of whom were victims of the early Thursday demolitions blamed their landlords for lying to them that the county government will not evict them.
Levis Karisa said that his land lady assured them that they will not be evicted even after receiving an eviction order one year ago from the County government of Kilifi.
“All the blame lays on our land lady because an eviction order was issued last year but he promised us that all the issues had been solved and that we should not vacate her rental houses only for us to be ambushed today by county bulldozers,” he said.
He added that he was able to salvage all his belongings before the bulldozer could reach his one bedroom.
Adan Ibrahim, another resident said that he all along knew that the land belonged to the government since he was a child and that the land grabbers were known government officers.