The government will construct 5,000 housing units in Elgeyo Marakwet County under the Affordable Housing Programme (AHP).
The county AHP and markets implementation committee said Iten town under the Keiyo North sub-county, being the county headquarters, would get 2,000 units while Keiyo South, Marakwet East, and Marakwet West sub-counties would each get 1,000 units.
In a meeting chaired by County Commissioner John Korir, members were informed that already, a parcel of land had been identified in Iten for the construction of 200 units, with the tender being advertised.
The meeting was also informed that all 4 sub-counties had identified land for the construction of markets and that a team from Nairobi would this week visit the sites to embark on the drawing of the designs before advertising for the tenders in the next two weeks.
Noting that inadequate land was one of the challenges facing the project, the meeting put land grabbers on notice with National Land Commission County Coordinator Rebecca Maritim saying they have forwarded a list of people who have grabbed public land to the EACC to repossess the land.
She said NLC had put a caveat on all titles issued for public land to prevent wananchi from falling prey to people who may sell the land to unsuspecting Kenyans saying they had already successfully repossessed some of the grabbed plots.
The meeting called on the EACC to fast-track the process, especially on land where people have allotment letters but were yet to put up any developments on the land.
The county commissioner called on all government departments to play their role in ensuring that the programme is successful and urged officers to be ambassadors of the same by explaining to wananchi the benefits of the scheme.
By Alice Wanjiru
