Abandoned victims of violence cry for State help

By Elly Odhiambo

Before the 2007-2008 post election violence, Mary Moraa led  a quiet life and took care of her two children without much ado.

Moraa, who lives in Mosque IDP Camp in Mau Summit, says she has heard that other people who were affected by the violence have been given land and even had houses built for them as they were resettled.

Says she: “The Government should build us houses, furnish them and give us other amenities like they have done for others.”

Moraa is part of 45 families who are still living under patched tents in an area that is one of the coldest in the country.

Before they ended up at the camp, they were part of the 4,600 families at Nakuru's Casino main camp.

“We rarely receive relief food and the relief agencies which used to give us food told us to turn to the Government,” Moraa says. “We are suffering and we rely on well-wishers and on some occasions, we work in the farms around here to get food.”

They do menial work at about 4km away at Baraka Agricultural College, Baraka Boys' Primary School and St Joseph's Seminary and St Timothy's Catholic Church.

“Relief food is brought once in three months,” says the camp's chair, Peter Kilika, who lost farm animals and 40 bags of maize when violence broke out four years ago.

He adds that they have heard that, according to the Government's policy, each family is entitled to 90kg of maize, 2kg of cooking fat and 40kg of beans every month.

Empty promises

“We do not get that much food. What we receive is never enough, but what we need is land then we can fend for ourselves,” he says.

They have heard that for any of them to be eligible for a parcel of land and a house, they should have owned land measuring at least two and a half acres.

But most of them did not own land before the violence and either rented land for commercial farming or did menial work.

While the residents of Mosque Camp are waiting for the Government to buy them land, 966 families at the Pipeline Self-Help Camp in Nakuru town worry about something else.

They are not sure whether they will receive title deeds to the plots  they acquired after pooling the Sh35,000 start-up and reconstruction funds they received.

They were at the main camps in Afraha Stadium and Nakuru Showground and when the Government dilly-dallied in resettling them, they set out to look for land and bought 16 acres, which they sub-divided into plots measuring 21x24 and 21x27ft.

Just when they thought they were out of the woods and were on the road to owning property, the landowner died before ownership was transferred to them.

Next to their 16 acres is an undeveloped government land,  ear-marked for an airstrip, where 41 other families live.

This group was not registered as IDPs because they did not have identification documents, and therefore they never received the start-up or reconstruction funds.

They moved to the undeveloped parcel of land when the camps were disbanded.

“These families have been living in tents and on empty promises from  the Government,” says Daniel Njenga, the Nakuru County co-ordinator of National Internally Displaced Persons Network.

“The ministers of Planning and Special Programmmes have separately promised to resettle them, and so far, they have no idea who will eventually do it.”

In June 2010, Francis Kimemia who was then the Internal Security Permanent Secretary was quoted as saying that the Government planned to resettle IDPs who did not own land before the 2007/2008 election violence by the end of that month.

However, then minister for Special Programmes Esther Murugi disclosed that land on which to resettle the IDPs had been identified, but landowners were quoting high prices.

The national coordinator of the Kenya Land Alliance, Keffa Magenyi blames all the problems concerning resettlement of the displaced on poor profiling and lack of information.

He says it is the non-victims who started benefiting, and adds that initially, donors had been given a 'speculative budget' of Sh31 billion for purchasing land in different parts of the country, but they pulled out of the deal.

“Why was land being bought for all IDPs when some of them had land?” he poses, and says that when the donors pulled out, the list was revised and only 350,000 people were listed as having been landless. 

“But then, the wrong list continued to be circulated and it was soon discovered that there were more people than the land that was available as some rushed and were allotted plots.” He says the resettlement programme has become messy and the Government has refused to give them all the information concerning the land deals.

- Tomorrow read about the displaced of Coast