Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) boss Mohammed Badi has revealed that a land syndicate has been derailing a project launched by President Uhuru Kenyatta in Nairobi County.
Uhuru had launched the issuance of title deeds in the city in August 2020 with the aim of hitting a 30,000-mark.
Badi, however, confirmed that the high number of cons with fake title deeds have derailed the process in which NMS aimed at achieving 18,000 new title deeds in a year.
He revealed that nearly a year after the launch, the team has only been able to secure 10,000 title deeds.
He noted that the cartel often uses fake title deeds to grab land hence making the process of awarding the deeds to their rightful owners much harder.
Badi explained that his team was banking on the reformed digital lands system introduced by the Ministry of Lands to help minimise the effects of the fake title deeds cartels.
"The titling process is a huge nightmare for us because of the fake title deeds but with digitisation by the Ministry of Lands, we will be able to cut off the con people who got the fake titles," stated Badi.
At the beginning of June, the Ministry of Lands announced that it would shut down its Central Lands Registry at the headquarters in Upper Hill.
Lands CS Farida Karoney disclosed that all the files found in the registry would be moved to county branches.
She explained that the ministry had resorted to the move in an attempt to curb rampant corruption that had hampered the functions of the office for years.
Karoney further noted that the files of Nairobi properties would be moved to the county's registry branch.
It is estimated that only 7,000 title deeds have been distributed in Nairobi since the process began.
