Nairobi: PRESS STATEMENT

THE STANDARD GROUP

TO ALL MEDIA HOUSES
December 31, 2010, the Ministry of Lands gave a notification of an intended compulsory acquisition of various parcels of land of varying sizes on both sides of Mombasa Road between VitafoaIn a notice in the Kenya Gazette Number 16756 and 16757 issue number 135 dated m and Enterprise Road, including the ultra-modern Standard Group Centre, and Waiyaki Way for the purpose of the JKIA-Museum Hill Gigiri Road Project (See attached list of those to be affected. Note that list is not exhaustive).

The consequences of the intended acquisition are far-reaching in terms of massive destruction of existing businesses whose economic value in terms of productivity, capital investment, loss of employment and services will be worth tens of billions of shillings ? the stakeholders have commissioned an independent audit and a final figure will be given in due course ?notwithstanding the adverse ripple effects.

In addition, the overriding negative impact is to actualise the destruction of the Standard Group as a media house and deny Kenyans their right to press freedom.

The overriding economic impact will be not only to undermine Kenya?s investment climate both locally and internationally, but also bring in a worrying element of uncertainty on predictability of land usage in the country.

Following the gazettement, a consultative meeting of some key Stakeholders was today convened and resolved as follows:

1) The Stakeholders expressed shock and disbelief that a democratic government can adopt a high-handed approach of unilaterally announcing an intended compulsory acquisition without due regard to a consultation process. Such action is arbitrary, autocratic and smirks of an attitude of a Government that does not care about private investments.



2) The Stakeholders reiterated that the parcels of land in question constitute private, legally acquired assets and not any land earmarked as road reserve ? a fact verifiable by the absence of a caveat in Ministry of Lands records.

3) The Stakeholders are of the strong opinion that those charged with the responsibility of design and development of the country?s road masterplan have failed in their duty, care and professionalism to plan for workable solutions consistent with best international practices and have elected a draconian option that amounts to destruction of tens of billions of shillings worth of investment and loss of thousands of jobs.

4) The Government has, time and again, insisted it is committed as a country to measures of creating a conducive environment to attracting investment that will help realise the Vision 2030 dream, and destruction of existing investments will be a setback.

5) It is apparent from the road design that the routing could have been influenced by other factors that amount to a conspiracy to target specific businesses as evidenced by the inconsistency in the width of expansion and where the road begins, besides lack of transparency in the project design.

6) Whereas the public good intention exists in terms of expansion of roads, this must be done in a well-structured and planned manner with minimum destruction to existing investments and assets, which in this case are far-reaching compared to the resultant benefit e.g. of a two-and-half kilometre road widening on Mombasa Road and 1.5km on Waiyaki Road.

7) Therefore, the Stakeholders strongly object to this massive, unwarranted and reckless destruction of businesses and public institutions and will employ whatever means to defend and protect our individual and collective businesses and safeguard media freedom.

8) Finally, we urge our national leaders led by H.E. President Mwai Kibaki and Rt. Hon. Prime Minister Raila Odinga to urgently intervene to have the design shelved and to challenge those responsible to come up with alternative road routing and workable designs that have limited negative economic impact.


Signed: Kiran Patel, Paul Melly