Sewerage project in limbo as Ruai land reverts to private firm

The controversial Ruai land in Nairobi which was declared a protected property by the Jubilee administration three years ago has controversially been allocated to a private company, we can report.

Last Friday, the government revoked the Gazette Notice issued by then Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i in 2020 declaring the 1,600 acres of land protected area.

A source close to the deal confided that the land has been allocated to the company which is associated with powerful people in the government who, according to an already signed deal, later sell it to the government for the construction of affordable housing.

Following the 2020 Notice the land going by the title, The Dandora Waste Water Treatment Plant (Ruai) was placed under the Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company.

The parcels were meant for sanitation facilities, sewerage treatment plants and water storage facilities before they were grabbed by developers.

Questions are being raised on what will happen to the water and sewerage treatment project currently ongoing and being undertaken by the Athi Water Company.

World Bank

Efforts to contact the company’s acting Managing Director Joseph Kamau were futile as he did not respond to our calls.

The company immediately embarked on constructing a sewerage treatment plant funded by the World Bank, a project which is still in progress.

However, following the government’s move, the project is now in limbo since the land has changed ownership.

The Ruiru land is meant for a pumping station for the Ruiru–Kabete water supply and future expansion of the Nairobi waste and sewerage system.

However the government in the Gazette Notice dated December 15, Interior and National Administration Cabinet Secretary Prof Kithure Kindiki allowed the subdivision of the 1,054.6 hectares of land in Nairobi’s Ruai area belonging to the Dandora Waste Water Treatment Plant.

“The expression in the schedule that reads “LR Number 12979 Public Utility land for Nairobi Sewer Treatment Plant to read a subdivision of LR number 12979 being LR 12979/1/R,’” Prof Kindiki says in a gazette notice number 3829.

Kindiki further states: “The schedule by inserting another paragraph after the words: deposited in the survey records office at Nairobi to read subdivisions of LR number 12979 being LR 12979/3 measuring 404.58 hectares and LR number 12979/4 measuring 650.02 hectares and excluded from the Dandora Waste Water Treatment Plant (Ruai) protected area order 2020.”

Then President Uhuru Kenyatta had in 2020 revoked the allocation of the land in question to an influential personality serving in his government.

Through a gazette notice dated June 3, 2020, then Interior and National Coordination Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i had declared the land a protected area and a public utility.

“This order may be cited as the protected area order 2020. The areas/places or premises described in the schedule is/are declared to be protected areas for the purpose of the act and no person shall be in the specified areas without permission of prescribed authority or the Cabinet Secretary for Water and Sanitation and Irrigation,” Matiang’i had said in the gazette notice.

The land was questionably split into LR Nos. 12979/1, 12979/2, 12979/3 and 12979/4 sometimes in 2016.

LR No. 12979/1 — measuring 1,716.9 hectares — is where the Dandora Sewerage Treatment Plant stands. LR No. 121297/3 (1,000 acres) and LR No. 12979/4 (1,600 acres) said to belong to Offshore Trading Company and Renton Company Limited were then repossessed by Uhuru’s administration.

LR No. 12979/2 — measuring approximately 3,614.2 hectares — which had partly been occupied by squatters was also later repossessed towards the end of Uhuru’s administration.

Before the invasion of the land, Justices John Mutungi, Lucy Gacheru and Pauline Nyamweya had issued orders preventing the use, transfer or development of the property, now worth over Sh20 billion going by current market rates for private purposes.

The orders were issued after Ruai Squatters Settlement Scheme sued Renton and City Hall to stop their eviction from the property.

Rising population

In a show of impunity, Renton somehow acquired approvals from Nairobi County for the construction of multiple apartment blocks, hotels and a school on the land.

Then Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero’s administration granted the approvals on November 14, 2013.

The approvals were given a year after Renton attempted to sell the 1,600 acres of land it claimed to belong to Magereza Sacco, a savings and credit society for Kenya Prisons staffers.

Land grabbing in Nairobi County has left little or no land for the expansion of sanitation facilities in Nairobi despite the rising population.

Documents show that while the government had set aside 4,449.2 acres of land for the expansion of water and sewerage facilities, only 1,722.3 acres remain.

The rest of the land about 2726.9 acres has been grabbed by private developers.

At the Karura reservoir off Kiambu Road, 4.3 acres of land have been hived off from the original six acres allocated for water storage for Karura North and Eastern part of Nairobi.

The Loresho reservoir has also lost 2.3 acres of its land grabbed by private individuals. The land was in 1996 subdivided into six parcels —Nairobi Block 90/591-596.