More than 5,000 members of the Lolldaiga community from Laikipia County who are claiming compensation from the United Kingdom over a fire incident now want to be allowed to deliver claim forms physically.
The claimants say they have only managed to send 172 claims through the email address provided by the Inter-governmental Liaison Committee (IGLC) out of the 5,551 cases expected to be filed in the next ten days.
“As it appears that managing an email address is too complicated for the IGLC, I would like to suggest that we are granted the option of handing over the claims on a hard disk/USB/Hard Drive. There is no way that you can understand the frustration and stress that this process is causing us with a very tiny team of volunteers,” says part of a letter from the claimants addressed to British High Commissioner to Kenya Ms Jane Marriott dated December 20, 2022.
Last Friday, Ms Marriott wrote to the representative of the claimants lawyer Kelvin Kubai to respond to earlier complaints where she gave out her commitment to streamline any technical hitch hampering delivery of compensation claims.
“I am sorry to hear of the problems being experienced and share your frustration that the system set up by the Inter-Governmental Liaison Committee (IGLC) to receive the claims was not working as designed. I have asked my team to investigate and am satisfied that there is no intention to block or limit the number of claims processed,” the response letter to the claimants reads in part.
In the letter the envoy ruled out any ill intentions to frustrate in presenting the complaints to the IGLC and informed the claimants that the British Ministry of Defence had extended the deadline for filing of the claims by 11 days, from December 19 to December 31 this year.
“I trust that you will see this as an act of good faith, and an attempt to ensure that this matter is dealt with as comprehensively as possible. The UK-Kenyan Inter-Governmental Liaison Committee met last week and is fully determined to ensure the Lolldaiga fire issues are handled appropriately,” Ms Marriott says in the letter.
Mr Kubai in his latest communication to the envoy notes that despite the assurance, a total of 400 claims sent from the provided email bounced back on Tuesday.
“It seems as though it [email’s inbox] is not being emptied fast enough, if at all. This is incredibly frustrating and a real block to our people trying to achieve justice for the fire started by members of the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (BATUK),” wrote Mr Kubai and requested that affected members of the community be allowed to make physical delivery of the claim forms.
The issue of email address hitch in the filing of claim forms was first raised on December 5 this year before Justice Antonina Kossy Bor of the Nanyuki Land and Environment Court.
When the matter came up for mention, Mr Kubai told the court that the email address provided by IGLC was no longer accepting messages since it lacked enough capacity and that there was need to find alternative ways of presenting the claims.
In her directives, Justice Bor faulted the two parties for failing to keep in communication, adding that they should have talked about the challenges they were facing and resolved them instead of rushing to complain to the court.
The claimants are seeking compensation following the wild fire that was allegedly started by British soldiers during their routine training at the privately owned conservancy.
Communities residing next to the conservancy say the fire, suspected to have been caused by burning of toxic chemicals, adversely affected their health and that of their livestock. The incident also led to an increase of human/wildlife conflicts where after destruction of an electric fence, wild animals have been straying to the farms, mauling livestock and destroying crops.
