A row has emerged between the Salvation Army church in Maragua and a private developer with the latter being accused of grabbing the parcel of land owned by the church.
The church members claim that have had the allotment documents for the half-acre piece since 1969.
On Monday evening, they marched to the land, uprooted the fencing poles and cut down the barbed wire and set them on fire claiming that the private developer was out to snatch the land from them
Selina Wamaitha one of the founding church members said the parcel of land was legally theirs and they can’t let the developer take it away from them.
“This land was allocated to us by the defunct county council and we have all the documents to prove it,” she said.
The church had conducted a search with the office of the registrar of lands which indicated that up to 2017, they still held the ownership of the plot.
However, it emerged that the parcel of land had a different title deed reading a different name claiming that there were underhand deals to swindle them off the property.
They claimed that the then town clerk for Maragua town council Phillip Kinuthia allocated the plot to Mary Wanjiku who is his wife.
“We don’t know when the ownership of the land changed because we were not involved and we believe it was deliberate so we don’t oppose it,” Githinji Kamanda another church member stated..
When reached for a reply, Kinuthia claimed he was not in any way involved in the allocation of the land to another person saying this was done long after he had left the office.
He, however, stated that the town council which was the trustee of the land had established that the church had another parcel of land bigger than this and thus opted to give out one plot to another party.
“The land had been surrendered back to the board of trustees who had the right to allocate it to a different person,” Kinuthia said.
Further, he noted that the matter had been taken to the Environment and Lands court where the judge ordered the lifting of the caution that the church had imposed to bar the new owner from developing the land.
Kinuthia says he has filed a complaint with the police over the move by the church members to trespass on his property and destroy the fence around it.
Officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations have taken up the matter.
