Siaya: Nagging Questions Over Multi-million Got Akara Industrial and Aggregation Park

Through much pomp and ceremony the Siaya Industrial and Aggregation Park was launched late last year. There were some murmurings that residents of Got Akara were not compensated adequately neither were the necessary Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Audit exercises undertaken.

Construction work continues at the Got Akara site despite murmurings, grumblings and innuendo. Photo | the Standard

A concerned resident has now come up with hard evidence showing that a leading Siaya businessman used threats and coercion to get elderly people cede their land.

These elderly Kanyinek landowners were summoned to the offices of the businessman in Siaya where they were paid a token flat-rate over which they had no power to bargain.

The businessman said he was representing the interests of the County government. The KES 400 million plus industrial and aggregation park is being funded jointly by the county government and the national government.

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When the residents organized themselves into a group and sought legal representation a leading politician from Siaya County addressed the acquisition matter at a burial and directed that the discussion of Got Akara land transfers ceases immediately.

“That’s where we are at”, said a youth from Kadhai, adding “If we complain about the lack of adequate compensation we are told that we are anti-industrial development. When we keep quiet our parents curse us that we lost our ancestral inheritance without even putting up a fight.”

On 21 September 2023 Governor James Orengo in the company of then Trade CS Moses Kuria conducted a groundbreaking ceremony at Got Akara.

The project continues seamlessly without regard to matters of compensation and the larger environmental implications of having an industrial park in the Lake Kanyaboli catchment area.

The lake is a unique gem of nature. It’s the only ox-bow lake in Africa and home to the endangered swamp antelope sitatunga, besides having a rich collection of different species of fish, birds, flora and fauna.

Rights activists have also questioned the wisdom of spending hundreds of millions on an industrial park in a county whose only commercial farming activity,cotton, has been sabotaged by preceding governments.