Exploration work at a mining site in Kwale. Kenya is witnessing intensified activity in its mining and oil exploration sectors despite lack of laws. Photo/File
Parliament has been asked to speed up laws on the management of community land and mineral resource-sharing to avert conflicts between the government, explorers and the locals.
Kenya is witnessing intensified activity in its mining and oil exploration sectors following the discovery of huge deposits of titanium and niobium near Mombasa and gold in Trans Mara district.
“Unfortunately, there are no laws on compensation for community land or wealth-sharing whenever deposits of valued resources are struck at various sites across the country,” Mwenda Makathimo, the chief executive of the Land Development and Governance Institute (LDGI) told a media briefing in Nairobi on Tuesday.
The Constitution allows a five-year window for Parliament to enact legislation on the management of community land and minerals. This means the House has a deadline of 2015 to enact such laws.
“We must not wait for five years to have these laws because some multi-nationals can take advantage of their privileged knowledge to abuse the rights of the communities living in such areas,” Mr Makathimo said.
Most of Kenya’s land mass is under communal and traditional forms of tenure including vast parts of northern Kenya, the Rift Valley, Coast and eastern.
“In the absence of suitable legal framework to protect and govern holding and management of such group or communal land rights, unscrupulous deal brokers, political and state operatives have and will continue to exploit this vacuum,” he said.
Mr Ibrahim Mwathane, the chairman of LDGI, said there was an urgent need to operationalise institutions such as the Environment and Land Court and the National Land Commission created under the new land laws seeking to curb ownership disputes ahead of next year’s General Election.
READ: Lands Act outlaws sale of settlement scheme plots “Since 1992, Kenya has faced cyclic land-related violence during election times and the resolution of such disputes and injustices, whether real or perceived, should be left to the new institutions like the Environment and Land Court and the National Land Commission,” he said.
Lands Permanent Secretary Dorothy Angote said the newly created National Land Commission would be operationalised soon.
“As soon as the jobs for chairman and commissioners are advertised any time from now and interviews done we shall take the names to Parliament for vetting as per the constitution” she told Business Daily.
“There is no need for panic. We are going as per the constitution,”
The Environment and Land Court Act 2011 that was passed in August effectively repealed the Land Disputes Tribunal Act (LDTA), scrapping the role of district land tribunals
The Act provides for the establishment of the Environment and Land Court, which is equal to a High Court and will offer services across all the 47 counties.
The court has powers to hear and determine all disputes relating to environmental planning and protection, trade, climate issues, land use planning, titles, tenure, boundaries, rates, rents, valuations, mining, minerals and other natural resources.
