The popular green bulldozers pulling down structures and buildings illegally built in Nairobi could soon plough into a senator's lavish home in Kakamega town.
An environmentalists lobby in Kakamega has petitioned the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) to flatten Kakamega Senator Cleophas Malala's house.
The lobby group dubbed Western Land Alliance wants the house flattened to have the parcel of land that they argued is a wetland that should be repossessed by NEMA.
[caption caption="The house belonging to Senator Malala(PHOTO/COURTESY)"]
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“We request NEMA to demolish the house with immediate effect because the property has been built on grabbed riparian and wetland,” reads the petition by the group.
Both NEMA and Senate speaker Ken Lusaka have been informed of the intended destruction of the home in the petition dated August 13, 2018.
Malala's home is built as a single storey house, barely 500 metres away from Kakamega State Lodge and Masinde Muliro University.
The group has also filed their complaint to Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya, county speaker Morris Buluma as well as the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC).
When asked to comment on the matter, Senator Malala denied having grabbed and constructed the house on riparian land.
He told The Standard that "those people are ignorant, they do not understand that all wetlands in the country are gazetted. The said piece of land was bought in 2001, let them bring their petition to Senate.”
NEMA has dispatched a team of its Western Region officers to ascertain the claims made by the petition before filing a detailed report on the authorization of the house construction and state of the parcel of land.
The authority pledges to release findings and take appropriate action once the report is submitted on the property in contention.
[caption caption="Kakamega Senator Cleophas Malala (PHOTO/COURTESY)"]
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