Residents want President William Ruto to cancel disputed documents and oversee corrections to fees and parcel allocations.
A section of residents have returned Kwale title deeds issued by the government, citing alleged errors and disputed land allocations. They want officials to correct the documents before they accept them again.
The complaints involve payment conditions, difficulties using the titles to obtain loans and the size of allocated parcels. Residents are also asking President William Ruto to intervene and cancel the disputed certificates.
Residents question Kwale title deeds over fees
John Kassim, a Lungalunga resident, said some documents require holders to pay fees before completing their titles. However, he said residents received assurances during the issuance exercise that all payments had already been settled.
Kassim said the condition had led residents to question the documents’ validity and surrender them to the government. Their demand is for corrections before they take back the titles.
Other residents also said commercial banks had declined their attempts to use the documents to secure loans. They claimed the institutions questioned both the validity and value of the titles.
Resident Moses Makelele said the experience had eroded their confidence in the documents. He said they had expected the titles to help them access loans, but could not use them for that purpose.
Parcel sizes fuel settlement concerns
Residents also questioned the size of their allocations, saying some plots were smaller than the land they originally occupied. They expected the documents to reflect the larger parcels they considered theirs.
The complaints follow a separate rejection of settlement programme titles by another group of Kwale residents weeks earlier. That group said some beneficiaries received plots measuring 50 by 100 despite occupying and cultivating much larger ancestral parcels.
They also raised concerns about subdivision as the population increased. Residents claimed several households shared allocations on some properties, while some original landowners remained without title documents.
Ruto issued more than 94,000 title deeds in Kwale County in October, including over 26,000 in Lunga Lunga Constituency. The exercise formed part of government efforts to address longstanding ownership and squatter challenges at the Coast.
During that exercise, Ruto set a target of issuing 500,000 titles across the Coast by the end of 2026. Residents now want him to return and oversee corrected documents reflecting what they say are their rightful allocations.
