By TIM WANYONYI twanyonyi@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Wednesday, May 22 2013 at 23:30
In Summary
- Western Kenya natives were paid less and did not get benefits such as food, shelter during the resettlement programme
Claims of bias in the compensation of people displaced in the 2008 post-election violence were frustrating reconciliation efforts, the report by the Truth team says.
Some 1,133 Kenyans were killed and nearly 600,000 displaced in the chaos that followed the disputed presidential election results.
The government launched Operation Rudi Nyumbani to resettle victims of the chaos but some think it was implemented in a haphazard, incoherent way and marred with corruption.
Many of those who claim they were discriminated against were those from western Kenya and had been displaced from the Rift Valley and Central Kenya.
“There is a strong sentiment regularly expressed by some in government that IDPs do not exist here. We have heard government officials regularly underquoting the number of IDPs in this region...When it is convenient for them, they are considered to be fake. To date we have never been given a list of, for example, fake and genuine IDPs,” a witness told the commission in Kisumu.
In its efforts to assist the displaced persons, the government gave all of them Sh10,000.
An additional Sh25,000 was given to those whose houses were burnt during the violence.
Ethnic tension
This left out workers ejected from places like Naivasha, Kericho and Kiambu who also lost property.
Instead of fostering reconciliation, this has continued to inflame inter-ethnic tensions, the report says.
It says in Nyanza, while non-native IDPs were paid Sh45,000, the natives who fled other parts of the country only received Sh10,000.
In Trans Nzoia, some in IDP camps told the commission that their children had been denied bursaries.
“Our children are suffering a great deal. For instance, this girl you see here passed her KCPE and qualified to join secondary school but her life has been reduced to cooking in hotels. We did not get bursaries. It is like they are for specific people,” a mother told the commission.
The report says reconciliation is further complicated by the fact that those whose property was stolen still see it with their neighbours yet they are unable to reclaim it.
In Nyanza, victims also complained that while other regions were getting fertiliser, seed, and food rations on a regular basis, they had been ignored.
No political will
“The assumption is that the people who came from outside did not own any property and were not living any meaningful life but were just labourers and therefore all they lost were their wages,” another witness said.
The report says the State was not genuinely interested in resettling IDPs and the launching of programmes such as Operation Rudi Nyumbani was primarily motivated by the fact it only wanted to resettle a specific class of IDPs.
Similar complaints have been raised in the resettlement of those displaced from their homes on new land bought by the government.
The report accuses the government of lack of political will to deal with the IDP crisis.
It also blames the failure to deal effectively with the IDP crisis on lack of an effective policy and an administrative and legal framework.