This archive report was first published on 15 August 2019.
Published on August 15, 2019, a day after the evictions, at least 250 families in Eldoret town were forced out of county government housing units after a six-year tussle.
The evictions took place at Macharia Estate near 64 Stadium, with a contingent of police officers and county enforcement officials carrying out the exercise.
Angry residents claimed they had last month secured a court order stopping the eviction, pending a hearing of a case on September 17 in which occupants of the county houses are challenging the eviction at the Eldoret Environment and Lands Court.
However, the county government remained tight-lipped on the reasons for the eviction, with John Nderitu, a village elder at the estate, suggesting it might have been due to a rent payment row that started six years ago.
According to Nderitu, who is also a tenant in the estate where at least 1,000 people live, the county had first ordered residents to vacate in 2013 but locals rushed to court to oppose the move.
"County officers had asked tenants to pay Sh800 per month up from the Sh400 they were paying but the occupants resisted the move and challenged it in court," Nderitu, who has lived in the estate for more than 40 years, told The Standard.
Residents were left distraught, with some claiming their properties were destroyed during the eviction process.
"I don’t have anywhere else to go to. I told them (enforcement officers) that I am a poor widow and I have nowhere to resettle but they just told me to get out," said Christine Too.
Uasin Gishu County Secretary Edwin Bett defended the eviction, saying the county had secured orders to remove all occupants from the county premises.
"The police were enforcing a court order. It was not the county that was evicting people," Bett said.
