Eldoret Mayor William Rono was forced to apologise after the council demolished a church causing more than 600 faithful to carry out their Sunday Service in the open. Rono said the plot on which the Spiritual Life Centre Church had been put up was at the centre of an ownership dispute between two groups including the church and that the civic body should not have been involved in the private row. He said one of the parties in the dispute misinformed the council leading to the demolition during which the council used bulldozers to pull down a building valued at Sh1.5 million. "The plot does not belong to the council, but one of the parties misled our officers to carry out the demolition," Rono said in a telephone interview.
The Mayor has called for a meeting between council officials and the church to iron out the issue. "We will meet and discuss with them but I have to apologise to the church because the council should not have been involved in the private dispute," Rono said. Pastor Ben Bahati called the mayor and town clerk Stanslus Ondimu to protest after his church was demolished and the council officials agreed to meet with his team over the matter today.