Reports Leo Odera Omolo In Kericho Town.
The Kipsigis County Council has been served with a four months quite notice to surrender back the 470 acres Kabianga Tea estate back to its original owners or else face court action.
Kabianga was one of the first institutions which was established by the colonial authorities in Kenya first as a Government African School and later as a Teachers Training College and expanded to the Farmers Training School in the early 1950s.
At the time of the establishment of the Farmers Training School in the area, there was a big demand for more land to cater for the school experiment farm, and so the colonialists moved into the Kipsigis reserved land and forcefully evicted close to 30 families out of their ancestor’s land.
Those evicted by the colonialists out of their ancestor land were never compensated, so most of them ended up living squalid life as squatters in other parts of the region.
But around 1962 shortly before Kenya attained its political independence, the Farmers Training School was disbanded, and the land measuring about 470 acres was converted into a tea nursery by the Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with local authorities. The Ministry for some unclear reasons later handed the farm under the sole management of the County Council of Kipsigis.
It was, however, turned into a full fledged tea estate, and the County Council of Kipsigis took charge, and for close to four decades, the council has been fetching close to Kshs 4 million monthly from the sales of the farmers green tea leaves to the multinational tea companies in Kericho and its environ.
But last week 28 representatives of the families whose land was forcefully taken by the colonialists to make room for the tea estate without compensation got together and issued a four months notice to the Council to return their ancestor’s land or else face legal redress through a court of law.
Through the lawier of the former High Court Judge, Mr. Justice Johnson Mitei, the families said they would seek legal redress should the Council fail to surrender the land back to its original owners in the newly created Kericho west district.
The families said in the letter addressed to the Clerk to the Council of the Kipsigis County Council and dated May 27, 2011 they stated that at around independence, the colonial authorities abruptly vacated the land when Kabianga Farmers Training School was disbanded and the vacant land was converted into a tea nursery by the Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the local authorities..
In the demand notice, the 28 representatives of the displaced families said the farm under the name of Kabianga tea estate was originally known as “Koitab Kipsimot, but the Council moved in and illegally registered it under the name of Kericho Kabianga.
They further claimed that on February 16, 1970, without consulting or seeking the opinion of the families concerned, the Kipsigis County Council registered the land under its own name, a move that said is illegal.
“Without consulting or seeking our client’s concurrence, the Council caused the said piece of land to be registered in its name and purported to have reserved it for the Kenya Tea Development Authority {KTDA}, Kabianga an entity whose existence is in doubt,” said the lawyer’s letter.
They claimed that as the result of the degrading and inhuman treatment they were subjected to, they are now living in squalid conditions.
“Our instruction are that you make arrangements to vacate the said and parcel of land a within four months,” said the notice.
Ends