Kiambu,
Tuesday March 19, 2024
KNA by Sylvia Wanjohi
Kiambu residents have petitioned the County Government to have the County Valuation and rating Act of 2016 replaced.
The stakeholders have asked the Assembly to have charges on land rates imposed on the freehold parcels quashed.
During a public participation meeting at the Kiambu County Assembly, Bunge Mashinani Speaker Eric Mutura, said the Act should not be in effect due to lack of public participation.
“The Valuation and Rating Act of 2016 whose components and contents were never subjected to public participation should be scrapped forthwith and a new law drafted and proper public engagement conducted,” said Mutura.
He went on to request the County Assembly to legislate on allocating one percent of Kiambu County budget to Civic Education.
“According to Section 100 of the County Government Act, we request that you allocate funds to invigorate civic education to improve on the public participation for development. We request a minimum of 1% allocation,” he stated.
Additionally, Mr. Robert Odanga, an advocate of the High Court who attended the function on behalf of Real Estate Stakeholders (RESA), proposed that the County Valuation and rating Act replaced, due to the illegal levying of rates on freehold properties.
“Let’s call what is freehold free, that means it should not attract any payments because it would be illegal to charge that which was acquired and allotted as freehold thus it’s good to differentiate between freehold and leasehold,” said Odanga.
He further added that he could not understand how the county executive came up with valuation roles that determine rates that are payable and to what amount due lack of zoning and spatial planning. “In drafting of this petition, we could not find zoning and spatial planning by the County and we were at loss at how it came up with valuation roles that will determine rates that are payable and payable to what amount” Odanga said.
The participants called upon the County Government to Zero rate all the freehold parcels citing that the Mau Mau uprising that took place in the 1950’s was aimed at giving people freedom over their land.
This exercise on public hearing was held by the Kiambu County Committee on Planning and Urbanization at the County Assembly that is supposed to table their findings on the matter on the 27th of March after discussing with the whole house on 22th of March.
Courtesy; KNA