Kisumu Lands office that has over the years been notorious over conning, bribery and grabbing of parcels land belonging to widows is back on the spotlight for wrong reasons.
This time, the dreaded cartel responsible for the rot at the regional lands office is out to resist every move by the new Land Cabinet Secretary Zacharia Mwangi to rout out corruption and restore sanity.
CS Mwangi has been petitioned to pay attention to the shocking happenings at Kisumu Ardhi House where widows and orphans dominate the long list of victims of land theft.
The cartels who work in cahoots with crooked government officials have given the Kisumu office the face of a car bazaar with vehicles lining outside the car park where deals are struck.
They lure unsuspecting Kenyans who are seeking services at the lands office that they can offer speedy and efficient solutions to their problems.
They have perfected the art of faking everything required in land transactions from ID cards, marriage certificates, any needed important document and even arrange for wives to husbands to appear before the lands board.
They mostly target old women and men and lure them that they can fast track their land deals. They ‘provide’ solutions to services that take between one to two weeks within two hours.
And they appear genuine since they collude with corrupt lands officers and attract more customers, who are robbed of their parcels of land during such interactions.
A major overhaul has been carried out moving staff in various departments to cut the links with these cartels and restore but they are guns out to resist the reforms.
Kisumu lands office has been a corruption den, a slaughter house and an office that has been held captive by land cartels for decades.
Police would arrest the cartels on a weekly basis in the past but the men uniform have also been roped in the dirty business for kick backs.
The cartels also have boda boda riders in their ring who pick passengers by the gate and hook them to fake land officers who con and defraud them of their land.
