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Kenya: Leave Rift Valley? No Way, Say Leaders
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The Nation (Nairobi)
6 May 2008
Posted to the web 6 May 2008
Muchiri Gitonga
Nairobi
Lands minister James Orengo has been criticised for saying internal refugees from Rift Valley should be resettled outside the province.
Central Kenya leaders, among them Gender and Children Affairs minister Esther Murugi Mathenge and MPs Lenny Kivuti (Siakago), Jeremiah Kioni (Ndaragwa) and F.T. Nyammo (Tetu), said internal refugees must return to their land.
Sell land
The MPs told ministers to avoid careless utterances since the country was on a recovery path after post-election violence in which more than 1,000 people were killed and hundreds displaced.
Ms Mathenge said if internal refugees were to be settled elsewhere as the minister proposed, they should be allowed to sell their land to willing buyers at the prevailing market rates.
The legislators were speaking during a thanksgiving service following the Nyeri Town MP's appointment to the Cabinet.
Mr Kivuti said the grand coalition Government could experience problems if ministers continued to make irresponsible statements.
"We reject such statements especially at a time when hundreds of people are living in the cold under inhuman conditions. We supported this Government so that these people can go back to their original land," the legislator said.
Mr Kioni said it was wrong to mislead people that they would not return to their land.
He said it should not be assumed Central Province people went to Rift Valley and seized land and that was why they must vacate.
Those who settled there, he said, bought land from willing sellers just like anybody was free to buy land in Central Province.
During the ceremony in Nyeri Town, the MPs also called for dialogue with members of the outlawed Mungiki sect that has in the past been associated with criminal activities.
"We must take the problems of internal refugees and that of Mungiki members into our hearts," the minister said and attributed the Mungiki problem to failure by parents.
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"These Mungiki members are our children and every time they are gunned down, we feel pain as mothers. We must bring them back home," said Ms Mathenge.
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