Siaya County spatial plan to address land injustices

Siaya County Government is working on a spatial plan that will address and cure historical land injustices and enable the county repossess all the public land that have been grabbed.

The spatial plan, a legal document that will guide on the use of land within the county will also enable land be managed in a better, strategic and organized way.

The document proposes that land be reserved for specific purposes especially on where to settle and where to do our agricultural practices.

The document is proposing that the people should move to urban areas for settlement and leave their ancestral homes for Agricultural activities to avoid the issue of people settling anywhere.

According to the county Executive member in charge of land, Dismas Wakla, the preparation of the document is in its fourth stage where stakeholders are currently undergoing a public participation.

“This document is anchored in both the constitution and county government act and guides use of land in the county. It entails mapping out the county and placing every land in its rightful position. Once completed will be made available to every resident of Siaya,” revealed the CEC.

The process of having this document was structured in four phases namely; Inception, data collection, situation analysis and lastly drafting and finalization.

“We are currently in the last stage. I every undertaking that we do as a government we must involve the people and that is why we opted to have stakeholders meeting with consultants.” noted the CEC.

The process of working on the spatial plan document was outsourced to expert consultants who are meeting stakeholders currently made of the technical team and all the ten department of the county are represented.

The stakeholder‘s meeting involved the interrogation of the draft to confirm that it met the requirements of the county government.

Mr Wakla said the document must be completed as soon as possible because funding of counties will be pegged on the availability of the document.

This comes barely few months after the county was listed among counties to benefit from Sh199 million from the World Bank to develop the urban centers.

The fund is part of the world banks USD 300million grant targeting 59 urban areas in the 45 counties Kenya.

The county government is also participating in the Kenya Urban Support program that is funded by the World Bank to support investments in urban development.

The fund will be used in the next three years to help strengthen the county’s infrastructure capacity and upscale urban development.

 “Once the meeting is done the consultants will  enrich the document to put in everything discussed before bringing on board the major stakeholders who are the people from all over the county before taking it before the Executive cabinet and finally to the assembly for approval,” he said.

He added that there was a policy before the assembly awaiting approval on how to manage the issue of   grabbed lands that must be recovered.

“We will use due process to recover land and we have finished an audit process to identify land that belonged to the county government; we are working on the process of finding out how some of these people got the titles. It will be systematic and with commitments,” he added.