Residents of an estate in Nyali’s Kwa Bulo area, Mombasa, have called upon the government to intervene on their behalf after they were served with notices to vacate from the area they have called home for years.
This is after an insurance company staked a claim on the 85-acre parcel of land.
They indicated that they had been hit with ultimatums to pay land rates of the properties they resided in with some households receiving bills as high as Ksh2 million.
Addressing the media during a crisis meeting, former Nyali member of Parliament Hezron Awiti told the media he has written a letter to the head of state Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila to intervene on their behalf.
Awiti said during his tenure in 2016, President Uhuru and the Parliamentary Land Committee visited the area where the National Land Commission was ordered to resolve the stalemate and settle the squatters.
The squatters chairman Omar Kalama said the alleged owners of the disputed land are forcing the squatters to pay land rates ranging from 2 million to 10 million shillings to own the parcels of land they are occupying.
The 10,000 residents are just a small slice of the 15,000 families residing in Mombasa Central Business District under absentee landlords.
The total number of residents under the program known as tenants-at-will supersedes over 100,000 individuals.