Laikipia Governor Ndiritu Muriithi has sounded an alarm over the high number of fake Part Development Plans (PDPs) for parcels of land in circulation within the County.
Speaking when he toured the newly installed Geographic Information Systems (GIS) laboratory in Nanyuki town by the Department of Infrastructure, Housing, and Urban Development, Muriithi urged residents to use the facility to check on the status of land parcels before engaging in transactions.
“A rather large number of PDPs are not approved and that creates doubt on the legality of the land leases that were processed pursuant to those PDPs and therefore I urge residents to make use of this GIS laboratory to do better research before transacting,” the Governor said.
He revealed that cases of land fraud in the county were rife and added that the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) was conducting a probe into some of the cases in order to apprehend culprits.
“The investigations are covering dozens of officials at both levels of government, and also officers at the National Land Commission (NLC) as well as private land brokers,” he revealed.
He said the DCI officers were investigating a racket purporting to act on behalf of the Lands Cabinet Secretary that is involved in forging PDPs and using the same to generate back-dated allotment letters on public land.
The governor further said that the fraudsters were mainly targeting riparian land, government compounds, Kenya Railways land and the Nanyuki by-pass land.
He added that the Lands department had already digitized 5,000 Registry Index Maps (RIM) and a further 1,400 PDPs as part of the ongoing modernization of the Lands Registry for ease of transactions.
By Martin Munyi
