Uncollected land titles pile up in registries at the Coast

By Tobias Chanji, Patrick Beja and Joseph Masha

A day after the Cabinet sanctioned issuance of 60,000 title deeds at the Coast, it has emerged that tens of thousands of these crucial documents lie uncollected at various land registries.

The Standard established that thousands of title deeds have been gathering dust in registries at the Coast, some for up to seven years.

On Tuesday, President Uhuru Kenyatta chaired a Cabinet meeting that approved issuance of 60,000 title deeds in the region by the end of this month.

The directive came days after Deputy President William Ruto toured the Coast and promised residents that the Jubilee administration was determined to address the thorny land issue in its first term.

Ruto told meetings that the Government was alive to the fact that the region overwhelmingly voted for CORD because of the land problem.

Although we didn’t establish the total number of uncollected titles across the Coast, we learnt that in Kilifi alone there were about 20,000 such documents and up to 5,000 in Kwale County.

On Wednesday, the National Land Commission chairman Dr Mohamed Swazuri told The Standard that about 60,000 titles deeds “have been lying uncollected across the Coast region.”

Swazuri added that many landowners have been issued with allotment letters but have never bothered to collect the titles.

It is believed these are the titles that will be distributed.

In Mombasa County, officials said there were no records of uncollected titles but County Commissioner Nelson Marwa announced that his office was making an inventory of parcels of land for allocation to squatters.

In Kilifi and Kwale counties, officials have attributed the failure by residents to collect titles to ignorance. Some people do not even know that their documents have been prepared. Others are unable to pay fees for the papers and yet other landowners do not see the need to collect the documents as long as they are occupying their pieces of land.

Settlement schemes

In Kilifi the District Lands and Settlement officer Mr Felix Kiteto said that about 20,000 title deeds have not been collected and attributes the problem to ignorance and poverty.

“Lack of information and poverty should be blamed for the non-collection of title deeds lying in our lands registry,” said Mr Kiteto.

And a deputy Lands registrar at the Kilifi lands office Mbau Thaura said some title deeds could have stayed at the registry for over seven years. The   uncollected documents, he added, were in two categories; those prepared for squatters settled under presidential decree and those from government settlement schemes.

According to Mr Kiteto beneficiaries of 12 acres each from government-established settlement schemes are required to pay Sh5,650, while the fee for allocation on other lands is charged at Sh2500 per acre and accumulates with time.

The officer said though the Government was trying hard to identify land and allocate it to squatters, most of them do not come for the title deeds.

Kiteto said that in recent years, beneficiaries of settlements in 70 adjudicated lands did not collect titles yet some of them have already sold them off.

“The most shocking issue in Kilifi is the tendency of people to sell off land allocated to them by the Government to private developers even before being issued with title deeds,” said Kiteto.

In Kwale officials also announced that many titles have not been collected for years.