Lamu, KENYA: The National Lands Commission-NLC has completed the verification and approval of names of persons to be compensated after their lands were acquired for the Sh.200 billion coal plant in Lamu county.
The project is by Amu Power and is to be set up at Kwasasi area in Hindi division of Lamu county.
Speaking on Saturday,NLC boss Muhammad Swazuri revealed that a total of 514 names have been approved for compensation out of the original list of 615 that had been forwarded to the commission.
Swazuri said they have also identified 23 cases of multiple ownership, while over 70 individuals whose names had appeared in the first list of claimants had failed to turn up for verification even after the exercise was widely announced.
Swazuri said that he heavily suspected that those who didn’t turn up for verification were impostors who wanted to dupe the commission but were unable to.
“We are done with verification and approval;we now have a list of 514 people who will receive compensation for their lands which have been acquired for the setting up of the coal plant. Its notable however that some individuals didn’t turn up and we suspect they were impostors,” said Swazuri.
The NLC boss said there have also been issues of one name being repeated severally and other cases where family members can’t seem to agree on the person to receive the compensation monies.
He said the commission had already requested for funds and now awaits to receive the compensation money from the national government after which it will be channeled to the approved landowners.
Swazuri said at least Sh.800,000 million will be dispensed as compensation to the affected persons with an acre being compensated at Sh.800,000.
A total of 975 acres of land have been acquired for the project which is expected to generate at least 1,050 megawatts of power upon completion.
