The need to restore sanity in the many areas dogged by the impunity of illegal land allocations cannot be gainsaid.
The only problem is with how it is being done. These people may even have illegally erected structures on land meant for key amenities such as the Ruai Sewerage Treatment Plant in Nairobi.
However, they should be treated humanely. They have structures on the land and may have nowhere else to go immediately. Why not give them a notice to vacate the land?
The public anger over the recent house demolitions in Kariobangi North and the latest in Ruai is understandable.
In the latter, some fellows arrived on Friday night, ordered the families out of their dwellings and within hours, they had been flattened. The families ended up sleeping out in the cold.
This Ruai land is a messy affair that is entangled in a maze of allocations. Some of the people whose homes have been knocked down had obtained temporary court orders to allow the land disputes to be amicably resolved.
STATE PROTECTION
Ours is a civilised society that cherishes due process and the rule of law. After all, there are people who have looted public coffers or committed heinous crimes but they have not been seized and bludgeoned to death.
The same treatment should apply to the people illegally occupying government land. Whoever sanctioned the demolitions is also guilty of poor timing.
The squatters, like other Kenyans, are entitled to state protection. And it could not be more urgent, with the combined deadly consequences of the raging coronavirus epidemic and the current heavy rains.
It is callous to the extreme to demolish homes leaving children, women and people with disabilities at the mercy of the elements.
These people may be living illegally on public land, but what of the officials who sanctioned these allocations and the crooks who sold the plots to some of them?
The rot runs deep and it is only fair that the illegal allocations be revoked and all the culprits punished.
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