Kenya Insights

Tag: Kileleshwa

  • Kileleshwa MCA Alai Exposes Plan To Grab Public Land For A Mosque

    Kileleshwa MCA Alai Exposes Plan To Grab Public Land For A Mosque

    Kileleshwa MCA Robert Alai has exposed a plan to grab a piece of public land to Kileleshwa Mosque. Alai has alleged that the embattled former National Lands Commission commissioner Mr Wilson Kiruinge Gachanja is behind the scheme to grab the land tittle number L/R209/9770 located in Makueni Road.

    “Wilson Gachanja with the help of corrupt government officials are determined to grab this public land and sell it to the Kileleshwa Mosque.” Said the MCA.

    According to a letter from Gachanja’s lawyer, Bitumen Standard write to Nairobi County government requesting for clearance of the property occupied by traders.

    Letter.
    Enforcement notice.

    According to Alai, the land in question (209/9770) was of surrender to Nairobi City County just as all the 209 blocks were.

    “There is no way it changed to corrupt former Lands Commissioner Gachanja, unless only through corruption, who is now planning to sell it to Kileleshwa Mosque.” He claimed.

    The land.

    “Gachanja wanted Ksh 200 million and Mosque offered him Ksh 50 million. Now they have agreed on Ksh 170 million through this law-firm (Wambugu & Muriuki Advocates).” He claimed further.

    In June 2022, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) arrested Mr Gachanja and two others for aiding the illegal acquisition of public land by private developers in Kwale.

    Those who were arrested together with Mr Gachanja are a former senior lands officers in charge of the former Coast Province and former physical planner in the Ministry of Lands Mr Jabu Salim Mohamed.

    EACC said that the public land in question is a public access road Kwale Diani/Beach Block/1072 valued at Sh30 million.

    The embattled former lands boss recently had one of his properties in Kilimani, Nairobi auctioned.

  • Rogue Landlord Subject Kileleshwa Residents To High Insecurity On Account Of Being Forced To Pay Rent In Cash

    Rogue Landlord Subject Kileleshwa Residents To High Insecurity On Account Of Being Forced To Pay Rent In Cash

    The property, going by the name Viraj, has about 1,000 units in Kileleshwa and another 1,500 units on Mombasa road. For the Kileleshwa units the average rent is Ksh.70,000 giving a total of Ksh. 70 million cash collections for Kileleshwa alone. Adding up with the ones along Mombasa road, the cash collections could get to Ksh. 200 million monthly.

    There have been reported cases of muggings when tenants go to pay cash. Our team made a visit to to the location of offices where tenants take the cash and established that indeed the alley to the Viraj offices is quite solitary and leads to a dead end. The road is also in a deplorable state with suspicious looking people strolling aimlessly along the stretch. Besides the security issues, tenants had requested that due to covid pandemic, social distancing would have been achieved if they were given an account to be paying to. This fell on deaf ears.

    Tax Evasion

    The other issue however is that cash collection is always a recipe for tax evasion since there is no structured way of accounting for the rent collected. Previous exposePrevious expose by tenants and a number of bloggers however saw KRA take no action. Indeed the Indian owners always brag of how they have the KRA officers on their payroll and that nothing can be done to them.

    A number of units have however been sold by the Viraj owners, but even with this, they treat the owners with contempt. Payment of service charge is done with no improvements being made on the common areas. Units that were previously sold for 17m canfetch only 12m currently because of the poorly managed common areas within the estates. There is no paintworks of the external building and the perimeter wall, poor gardening, poor electrical connections, poor/old drainage, age old water tanks, among others.

    The patriarch Viju Patel has since split the houses to the children and the Kileleshwa units were given to a son by the name Vijay Patel. The son, a well-educated man, is a sharp contrast to his wife who is illiterate and very arrogant. Indeed, the laid back Vijay has left the running of the once sought after estate to the wife named Jyoti.

    Jyoti has turned the once beautiful Viraj Estate  into an eye sore, comparable to the dilapidated County council estates. The money collected is wasted with no meaningful investment to improve the outlook of the estate. The two have run down what the founder Viju Patel, took years to build. So hardworking and dedicated was the partriarch that he recently became the first Kenyan to buy a Tesla model X 75D. Effort to reach Vijay and his wife Jyoti bore no fruit as our phone calls went unanswered.

    Apartments in Kileleshwa estate.

    We only hope that with 100% sale of the units to other owners, there will be restoration of the glory of the once beautiful Viraj Estates as what exists is the extreme bottom of the barrel.