Proposed law seeks to limit land commission powers as Ngilu, Swazuri row rages on

NAIROBI, KENYA: A Bill has proposed changes to the law to limit the powers of the National Land Commission (NLC) in registration and management of land. The National Land Commission (Amendment) Bill, 2014 will deny NLC powers to ensure all unregistered land is registered within 10 years from the commencement of the original Act.

Apart from denying the commission the mandate on establishment and composition of county land management boards, the Bill also seeks to take away NLC’s function of conducting research related to land and the use of natural resources, and make recommendations to appropriate authorities.

The amendments are said to have been prepared by an official in the office of the Deputy President and will be tabled in Parliament for debate next week. A senior official at the commission termed the Bill as illegal and warned MPs against approving it.

“The mandates of the commission are derived from the Constitution and those pushing the changes are abusing the supreme law. We are also watching,” said a senior official at the commission who asked not to be named.

In the proposed law, the new mandate of the minister shall include provision of policy direction in relation to all classes of land, administration of private land and coordination of development and implementation of a national land information system.

“Whenever the national or county government is satisfied that it may be necessary to allocate some particular public land, the Cabinet Secretary or the County Executive Committee member shall submit a request to the Commission and the Commission may allocate such land,” the Bill reads in part.

The Bill has more than 30 proposed amendments. The plan to scrap the land boards comes at a time when the NLC is busy recruiting and constituting them. Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu is entangled in a row with governors after she demanded that NLC stops recruitment of county land management boards.

Ngilu wrote to the NLC on April 9 asking the commission to halt the process because her office and the county governments were not consulted. However, the governors contradicted Ngilu. “The commission has had several forums with county governments over the recruitment process and we are also aware that the National Government has been consulted,” Nyeri Governor Nderitu Gachagua, who chairs the Council of Governors Committee on Agriculture and Land, said in a letter to Ngilu.