Kenyans given three days to contribute to land laws

Kenyans have up to Wednesday to submit recommendations to Parliament on three new bills on land laws.

The bills contain drastic proposals on land access, ownership and control, especially relating to communally held land that comprises 67 per per cent of Kenya's national territory.

The proposals include radical separation between the National Land Commission (NLC) and the Ministry of Lands functions and roles and powers of each.

The bills also reduce the provisions in the controversial Maximum Minimum Land Holding Acreage Bill and the Evictions and Resettlement Bill to existing laws, effectively reducing the requisite time required to enact new laws.

The bills also carry proposals to have NLC commissioners recruited and vetted by the Public Service Commission and not a multi-stakeholder task force that created the current commission.

Other proposals include scrapping of the County Land Management Boards that NLC had set up in each county.

Some had faulted the boards on account of increasing bureaucratic layers in the land sector, which was already very bureaucratic and efficient.

Parliament now wants the public to comment on the Community Land Bill, 2015, the Physical Planning Bill, 2015 and the Land Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2015.

An advert by Clerk of the National Assembly Justin Bundi, published last week in print media urged the public to submit recommendations to the departmental Committee on Land, Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources through his office.

Legal requirement

The Constitution requires Parliament to facilitate public participation in the process of law making, but which often takes the form of newspaper adverts and written memorandum by vested interests and civil society, with little direct input by wananchi.

Failure to enact the land laws had caused concerns about the Jubilee government's commitment to land reforms.

The Community Land Bill, for instance, was a key tool in demarcating and arbitrating community and commercial interests in exploitation of mineral deposits discovered in the various parts of the country, where land is still communally held.

But it is the Land Laws (Amendment) Bill 2015, that is likely to generate most political heat. The bill states in its objects memorandum that it aims at unlocking stalled reforms by streamlining and ending conflicts and contradictions in existing laws and aligning them with the Constitution.

The bill also proposes to revert powers to establish the land information management system to the ministry.