In a bid to stimulate job creation through tourism and fishing, members of the Nakuru County Assembly passed a motion seeking to compel hoteliers and investors to open up corridors they have subsequently blocked around Lake Naivasha in Kenya.
The motion, which was passed on Friday (July 13), was tabled by Naivasha’s Lake View ward representative, Karanja Mburu, who said members of the public were forced to travel more than 30 kilometres to access the lake, using the Naivasha-Kamere road, despite the lake being surrounded by 23 access roads.
He said it was wrong that unemployed youths in the area had no work when the lake had the means to provide ample opportunity for them to earn a living through tourism and fishing activities.
Mburu continued: “These are corridors blocked by hoteliers, flower growers and real estate developers and it will no longer be business as usual because we cannot let our people walk 30km to get access to the lake, yet the corridors are just a kilometre away from estates… Now they have the opportunity to voluntarily open up the roads, since they know failing to do so would see the law we passed take its course," reports Standard Digital.
Majority Leader for the Nakuru Jubilee Party, Stanley Karanja, accused private developers of grabbing public access roads and turning the lake into private property. He said individuals and entrepreneurs running high-end hotels must not be allowed to use the lake exclusively while excluding local members of the community.
Whilst commending the assembly on the work achieved, Mburu said the onus was now on government agencies to further investigate and come down on all those who had blocked the corridors in recent years.
According to Fredrick Muthui, Chairman of the lobby group, Friends of Lake Naivasha, the opening of these corridors would mark a new beginning for the lake, which has been faced with a myriad of challenges.
Muthui said, of the 19 corridors surrounding the lake, only one was open to the public.
A day after the motion was passed, engineers from the county moved into Kihoto estate in Naivasha, and opened up one of the corridors.
