Call for halt to Criticos’ farm sale
A worried farmer Basil Criticos who is a former Taveta MP shows a Nation reporter some of his sisal plantation which he said is part more then 15,000 hectares of his land which has been repocessed by the government without notifying him and new squarters had started invading the land after the government said it will settle the landless squarters. Photo by Gideon Maundu.
The controversial subdivision of Mr Basil Criticos’ farm that is attached by the Agricultural Finance Corporation is in progress amid calls by local leaders for exercise to be halted.
Mr Criticos, former Taveta MP, was given the go-ahead in April to sell 7,000 acres to enable him repay a loan of Sh36 million he owes the AFC.
The letter, dated April 22, 2008, was signed by AFC managing director Omurembe Iyadi.
Although the deal was announced officially after separate meetings attended by senior AFC officials, the local DC and Mr Criticos, local leaders are opposed to it.
Among the leaders is Special Programmes minister Naomi Shaaban, who is the area MP.
Speaking at a leaders’ meeting chaired by her Lands counterpart James Orengo in Voi on Saturday, Dr Shaaban called for the revocation of the deal.
She said the Taveta community “has the financial capacity to service the loan to redeem the land instead of leaving the process to the former MP”.
“We cannot allow such a process to be left in the hands of a person who has held the community to ransom for many years,” she said.
Dr Shaaban accused Mr Criticos of collecting about Sh20 million from residents, promising to sell them land. She claimed that after Mr Criticos raised the money, he went into self-exile in America in 2001.
Outrageous
She said the land was not degazetted as trust land and whatever transaction the politician was making was illegal.
But Mr Criticos, who was not allowed to address the meeting, termed the minister’s statement “outrageous”.
