Budget Tracking Report
In the 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 fiscal years, the Kenya Government allocated Kshs. 400 million and Kshs.1.3 billion respectively for the resettlement of persons displaced by ethnic clashes, those relocated from water catchment areas, and squatters. The resettlement was aimed at improving their living standard, increasing food safety and enabling these persons to share in the growth and prosperity of the country.The resettlement was to be on land purchased by the government from private individuals. An evaluation of this resettlement programme conducted by the Kenya Land Alliance between October and December 2008 however reveals that it was being carried out in a haphazard, hasty, incoherent manner and lacking transparency. There is no evidence that it benefited the targeted landless people.
The resettlement exercise is not guided by any clear policy, except that it is a measure to provide individual tenure to the target beneficiaries under the Registered Land Act. In the past, the practice has been that land would be purchased or vested in the Settlement Fund Trustees (SFT), who would then offer it in small parcels to prospective settlers at a price. Under this practice, no freehold titles would be granted until the settlers complied with the terms and conditions in the letters of allotment. That has been the position of the Department of Land Adjudication and Settlement to-date. This policy-by-practice has been a major impediment in the past efforts to settle the landless as it carries with it the condition that the settled repay a substantial amount of money that is regarded as a compulsory land loan on their allocations. Many of the prospective settlers find this condition difficult to fulfil.
This lack of a coherent policy on resettlement is at the root of the current slow pace of the resettlement of the landless. Equally worth noting is that the ethnic clashes of the 1990s occurred in the Rift-Valley, Coast, Nyanza and Western Provinces and the relocation from water catchment areas in the Rift-Valley and Central Provinces, yet the land purchased for resettlement is in the Rift-Valley and Coast Provinces and those being resettled are mainly from the two provinces.
The Kenya Land Alliance has tracked the budget and the resettlement process to ascertain how public funds that were allocated to this resettlement programme have so far been used. The tracking reveals that the government’s own tendering procedures were flouted in the acquisition of the land meant for resettlement to the benefit of individuals with powerful political connections. Public officials in charge of the re-settlement process failed in their public duty to avail information to the public on the process, thus providing a convenient veil for corruption. Moreover, the tracking revealed that only a very small fraction of those displaced by ethnic violence and the landless have benefitted from the re-settlement programme. All these were from the Rift Valley and Coast Provinces, yet these problems are not restricted to the two provinces. The government has not offered any explanation as to how it intends to address the plight of those outside the two provinces.
The Kenya Land Alliance recommends that thorough investigations should be conducted into the entire resettlement process with a view to addressing the complaints of the beneficiaries as well as punishing those public officials implicated in fraud.
KLA also recommends that Parliament should paycloser attention to public procurement processes, to ensure adherence to the rules and restore public confidence.
to have a clearer view 
