Hundreds of squatters want to be settled on a 2,000-acre farm in Laikipia countywhich they have lived on decades.

Speaking when they held a demonstration at the farm to demand to be settled by the county government, they said the farm LR-2426 is available to be allocated to them since the former owner, a settler, Irene Ida Norman died in 1959, three years after the land lease she held expired.

Wilson Lesao said they were recently dismayed after an Asian came and fenced off 260 acres of the 2,192 acre farm located in Kisiriri area of Salama Ward, Laikipia West constituency.

 The squatters demanded an immediate audience with Governor Joshua Irungu who is well conversant with the problems they have faced over the years including their houses being torched by the administration.

 “We want the governor to come and chart the way forward and if he does not come voluntarily we will go for him in his office or home because we deserve being settled like other Kenyans,” Lesao said.

 He said the administration has been claiming that the land belong to George Jenning. Lesao said Jenning owns neighboring 2413 acres farm whose number is LR2425.

 Miriam Waithera said she cannot access her vital documents and clothes after the Asian fenced off the area where her house stands, thus denying her access to the home.

 “I am among 66 families that were evicted from their homes after the area was fenced off. I left my documents, bags of maize and irrigation pipes that were in the house,” Waithera said.

 She said they were contemplating suing the Asian for evicting them without any court order. She said it is unfortunate because, 60 years of Kenya’s independence, they were being evicted from the land they have lived for many years.

 Moses Leng’eren said he was born in the farm where his family has lived for over 30 years. He said families who were evicted had been promised by an Assistant County Commissioner in Rumuruti that they would be resettled but nothing has been done to date.

 “We know the Asian who was assisted by the ACC to fence off the land thus rendering many people homeless,” Leng’eren said.  Veronica Moraa Gekonge who was also born in the farm demanded transfer of the ACC saying the administrator was settling foreigners in the farm instead of the squatters. According to Ibrahim Lesian, the squatters wrote to all elected leaders in Laikipia in January this year, seeking assistance but they got no response.