Kiambu Residents Protest Govt’s Exhumation of Bodies in a Community Cemetery for Road Construction

Residents of Limuru, Kiambu County, have placed the Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA) on the spot for ignoring their views and going ahead to exhume bodies for an ambitious road project.

The irate residents took to the construction site to protest the move by the roads authority terming it a disrespect to the dead, their families and the community at large.

While the residents revealed that they were not against the road project, they did not agree with the move to exhume bodies in fresh graves and piling soil on them.

Further, the residents have alleged that KURA is hijacking the road site since, the new road was not supposed to pass near the cemetery, this despite the construction being already underway. 

The residents had proposed an alternative spot for the road, but KURA ignored their opinions. They went further to clarify that they had not attended any committee meeting agreeing that the graves would be exhumed.

“What we are saying is that you cannot come where people have been buried and exhume them; that is very unfair, and we will not allow it,” Kinyanjui Kawanjiru, one of the residents, revealed.

The residents are calling upon KURA to heed to the opinions of the residents and to stop pushing the agenda of having the road on the graveyard.

According to the residents, an investigation into the exact spot of the road was done, and it was found that the road was not supposed to be where KURA wanted to construct it but somewhere else.

KURA had been allowed to construct a 100-metre road at a different spot, but the residents decry that the authority is thwarting the initial plan.

They are now calling upon the local and national governments to intervene and help them.

This is not the first time graves have been exhumed to pave the way for roads in the county. In September 2023, 21 graves were exhumed in the county to pave the way for the construction of a 22-kilometre Maumau road in Gitithia village, Lari Kiambu County, following court orders obtained by the contractor.
Families affected by this move were compensated with Ksh50,000 each.