By Hilton Mwabili
The Kenya Coast National Polytechnic (KCNP), formerly Mombasa Technical Training Institute, is locked in several land ownership disputes with powerful individuals and the neighbouring community.
Chief Principal Anne Mbogo said their land had been invaded by grabbers and squatters, thus denying the institution room for expansion.
Some politicians and businessmen, she claims, were eyeing the institute’s land.
“Our land is approximately 10 acres, part of which the local community is claiming ownership. They claim the playground belongs to them,” said the principal.
She is concerned that the disputes with the community is a security threat.
“Sometimes there are confrontations between the students and members of the community over the use the field. The field is a shared facility between the college and neighbouring schools. But accommodating the community becomes a big problem,” Mbogo said.
According to Mbogo, the school had acquired land for expansion in the Shanzu area but they are unable to develop it because grabbers had invaded it.
“The challenge is evicting the squatters because they are backed by influential people. We really want them to release the land to allow us to decongest the main campus,” she said.
The row over 26-acre Shanzu land has refused to go away despite promises by successive Education ministers to resolve the matter.
Squatters insist that they are the rightful owners.
When she presided over a graduation ceremony at the institute in 2010, the then acting Minister for Higher Education Hellen Sambili and her Tourism counterpart Najib Balala promised to reclaim the land for the expansion of the MTTI.
“I am going to do what I can to ensure this institution does not lose the land for expansion,” Prof Sambili said then.
During the 2017 graduation ceremony, the then Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i assured that the government would reclaim the seaside land.
Matiang’i, promised that his ministry and that of Interior would ensure the land in the Shanzu suburb would be repossessed.
“The land you have in Shanzu belongs to you and I understand from my colleagues in the Ministry of Lands and the National Land Commission that all the documentation and paperwork for the land is fine. I am going to work with Mombasa County Commissioner and the Regional Coordinator to ensure that the people sitting on the land are evicted. They are not poor people who need the land. They are rich people who are trying to misuse public resources,” said Matiang’i.
Three years down the line, Matiang’i, who has since moved to Interior ministry, is yet to act on his promise.
