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Kihiu Mwiri land owners cry foul on ‘flawed’ titling

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Members of Kihiu Mwiri Company during a past protest. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Some shareholders of the defunct Kihiu Mwiri Farmers Company in Murang'a County are accusing the government of hoodwinking them that they would get title deeds, claiming 12,000 of the documents are yet to be issued.

President Uhuru Kenyatta disbanded the company in 2015 after it turned into a bloody battle field as competing forces wrestled to control it, resulting in numerous cases of fraud in the share register.

According to Kihiu Mwiri Titling Project action group chairman, Harun Njoroge, “of the 15,000 title deeds that the President promised and launched issuance of, only 3,000 were given.”

He said Mr Kenyatta was misled by government officials as well as administration officers to believe the shareholders’ problems had been resolved.

“Today, theft of shareholders’ land is going on unabated and we have no one to air our grievances since our company was deregistered via an executive order. Powerful forces including senior government officers, politicians and businessmen continue to grab land,” he said.

He claimed that the 3,000 titles were issued to only 156 shareholders who owned multiple plots and had the cash to pay the Sh85,000 per plot demanded by government agents and brokers as survey, land physical visits and titling fees.

Further, he said that the president was misled to adopt 1,269 acres as the total acreage of the Kihiu Mwiri land “while the pioneers of this company had in 2009 declared our total wealth as 5,804 acres.”

The company is reported to have owned land in Murang’a, Machakos and Kiambu counties “but the presidential titling programme only centred on some of our Murang’a lands.”

However, Murang’a County Commissioner Mohammed Barre told the Business Daily that his lands office has only 300 of uncollected titles adding that the Kihiu Mwiri titles were being processed and distributed by Nairobi.