Mau settlers disrupt demarcation process

By Margaret Kalekye / KNA, Posted: Sun, Mar 14, 2010 Tension was high on Sunday in Maasai Mau forest in Narok South District where government surveyors are marking new boundaries ahead of the third phase of Mau evictions. The over 15,000 settlers earlier blocked the demarcation exercise following reports that the team of surveyors was in the area to carry out evictions from the 146, 800 hectares complex. Narok South DC Chamwaga Mongo, who rushed to the area to calm the irate settlers, urged them to allow the surveyors to go on with the process assuring them that no evictions would take place. The settlers’ spokesperson William Cheruiyot said tension heightened when the surveyors arrived in the company of armed security personnel. “We were not informed of the arrival of the security officers which made us think that we were going to be evicted,” he said and asked the Government to end the Mau saga once and for all by compensating them. “The team is here to survey and mark boundaries only and not evictions,” reassured the DC, who spent more than two-and-a-half hours at Sierra Leone convincing the settlers to allow the exercise to go on. Mongo said the surveyors would identify all the beacons in the forest to ascertain the original boundaries. He reaffirmed the Government stand that all those with genuine title deeds would be compensated. Later the angry settlers reluctantly allowed the the process to continue but vowed that they will not leave the forest until they were either compensated at the current market rates or given alternative land. The surveyors have for the last one month been marking the forest boundaries at Naisoya where the exercise was officially launched by the Lands Ministry and the Mau secretariat. The third phase of evictions set to begin next month targets recovery of 146,000 hectare Maasai Mau forest where most settlers have either title deeds or land sale agreements. The Minister for Environment and Natural Resources Dr. Noah Wekesa said that the third phase of the eviction will cost the government Ksh.8 billion.