Kiambu denies intent to disinherit land rate defaulters.
Kiambu County Government has denied reports that it plans to
reposes land belonging to residents who fail to pay their land rates.
While admitting that the law does not allow them to
disinherit those who defaulted on their obligation to pay rates, Lands, Housing, Physical Planning, Municipal
Administration and Urban Development CEC Mr. James Mitambo Maina said that they had opted
to use other alternatives such as offering penalty waivers in a bid to
encourage more people to pay their rates.
“We have no intention of disinheriting anyone’s land to
recover rates arrears. However, we encourage all those who have not paid their
land rates to do so through incentives such as waiving penalties for late
payments,” said the CEC during a Public Participation Forum on land rates at
the Thika Plenary Hall.
Maina added that after listening to the public uproar over
the increment of the land rates, the devolved government decided to suspend
them and organise a fresh round of public participation to incorporate the
residents’ views into the new rates.
“As we stand, these rates have been suspended and we will
revert to the old rates as we head to the process of degazetting them. However,
there has been a lot of misunderstanding with the new rates as we had actually
decreased the amount charged from the previous 0.75% to 0.25% of the value of
your land,” he explained.
He noted that the increase in the land rates had been
necessitated by skyrocketing rise in the value of land within the county.
“The value of a quarter acre piece of land in Ngoingwa
previously was valued at sh. 288,000 attracting land rates at 0.75% then. Today,
the same piece of land goes for sh. 2,160,000 but at the rate of 0.25%, we
had charged them at for just sh. 5,400,”
he said.
The CEC admitted that
the county government collected revenue from barely less than 50% of the
private land ownership.
“The value of private land in Kiambu County is worth about sh.
79 billion. Therefore, if everybody pays their rates at the proposed 0.25% of
the value of their land, we will generate approximately sh. 1.7 billion. This
means that we will be able to offer quality services to the residents of Kiambu
County, consequently increase the value of such land significantly,” explained
Maina.
Maina clarified that the rates of land was calculated using
the Undeveloped Site Value (USV) whereby the its value was calculated according
to the value of property investments within its location.
Responding to the CEC’s explanations, the chairperson Thika
District Business Association (TDBA) Alfred Wanyoike commended the county
government’s decision to suspend the new rates. However, he appealed to the
minister to extend the 90-days notice for payment of these rates up to 30th
of April as the confusion emanating from this misunderstanding destabilised
many residents’ financial planning.
He also challenged the county leadership to take recommendations
by members of public seriously as their disregard to the people’s views was
what eventually led to massive default in payment of rates and licenses.
“One of the main reasons why people fail to attend such
forums was because they take them as a waste of time. This is because they feel
that none of their views are taken into account as the public participation
forums are just PR stunts by the authorities who eventually do what they had
planned to do without taking into account the interests of the people they
govern,” said Wanyoike.
Chairman of Peace Campaign and Community Policing Aboo Norein
challenged politicians against using such forums to settle political scores
which ended up being shouting match-ups between warring camps thus beating the
logic for such platforms.
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