More than 500 elderly persons, who are members of the Kasarini Farmers Cooperative Society, on Thursday protested against what they termed as grabbing of their 2,000 acre piece of land.
According to Wambui Njau, 78, a member of the society, they acquired the said land in the year 1964.
“We inherited this piece land from our forefathers and fathers who used to be squatters here. The whole land was a coffee estate, which belonged to the whites and our forefathers used to work for them. After we inherited it, we were able to get title deeds for the land and we all got an opportunity to get share certificates,” said Njau while talking to journalists.
While marching through the streets of Kiambu, they said that they had earlier hired the services of five lawyers to represent them in court, but the private developer, who is building an estate in the land, bought them.
“We are very aware that the lawyers that we had hired were given Sh5 million to disqualify themselves from the case,” added Njau.
Machatha Kariuki, 76, echoed the same sentiments, saying that they have even buried some of their people there.
“The last person that we buried here was in the year 1988. It was after 1988 that some people, who claimed to be from the Coffee Research Board started coming and then they started slashing our crops and we were later evicted,” said Muchatha.
Muchatha went ahead and called upon the Lands CS to ensure that the matter is solved in a transparent manner.
“We are asking Charity Ngilu to come to our aid and assist us since we are suffering and yet we have land which we could be using to do our farming,” added Muchatha.