Mau latest

Eviction of settlers from the Mau forest entered the second day Thursday with over 200 families voluntarily leaving the forest and camping at Kapkembu area at the outskirts of the forest.

The families, which did not have title deeds, moved to make shift houses for fear of forceful evictions.

At the same time a section of Rift Valley Members of Parliament are accusing the government of not honoring its pledge of resettling people living in Mau forest.

The families however complained that the government had not provided them with transport as promised saying that they had to trek for two days without food or water.

A section of the MPs are accusing security forces camping in the forest of stealing maize from farms of the Mau evictees.

They also say support mechanisms should have been put in place before the settlers are evicted from the forest to avert creation of another lot of Internally Displaced Persons in the country.

But Constitutional Affairs Minister Mutula Kilonzo supported the exercise and called on all illegitimate settlers to vacate the forest willingly since the government will not consider them in the resettlement scheme.

However, Human right activists who toured the area appealed to the government to cater for the evictees' food and other basic needs lest they be forced to return to the forest.

The government on Monday sent hundreds of security officers to the South Western Mau, the first part of the 400,000 hectare forest set to be cleared of settlers. This follows the expiry of a two week notice by the government.

Failure by the settlers to heed the Government notice could complicate work for the Mau secretariat, which intends to complete the reclamation of the water tower by the first week of December.

The Chairman of the Interim Coordinating secretariat on Mau, Hassan Noor Hassan said the first and second phases of relocation from the South West Mau complex and which involves areas that were illegally encroached will see 19000 hectares of the forest land reclaimed and restored before the first week of December this year.

He reiterated the government's stand of not using force to relocate the occupants, and said many have heeded the vacate call and have started moving out of the gazette forest land.

The secretariat boss said the committee has started strategizing for the next three phases which will involve areas that were excised for settlement and where genuine title deeds were issued.