Kenya investors to lose Mau Forest land without compensation
By Paul Ilado and Geoffrey Mosoku
29 March 2010 Nairobi — POWERFUL individuals including former President Daniel arap Moi who were allocated huge parcels of land in the Mau Forest will not only lose their land but will also not be compensated. Last year’s fierce struggle within the ODM over whether the Mau evictees should be compensated was also a defence of the political elite who had received land in the forest. Late last year, Cabinet Secretary Francis Muthaura reportedly telephoned former President Moi to say that he did not need to worry about his Kitpagich tea estate. Now senior officials in the Ministry of Forestry have told the Star that only those innocent Kenyans who bought land from the big landowners as third parties will be compensated. “I can tell you for sure that all those who were allocated this land irregularly will not receive any money from the government,” he said. The Forestry official confirmed that the Kiptagich estate would be reclaimed. “Our legal team has already analyzed most of the titles held by those people and most of them are either fake or were irregularly allocated. We have identified the owners and they mostly own more than five acres and above. We have decided that there is no basis for compensating them,” said a senior official in the Forestry ministry. …
