A sugar company intending to grow cane in Msambweni District has been sued by area residents seeking compensation for crops it had allegedly destroyed.

The residents, numbering more than 2,000, also want the High Court to issue a declaration entitling them to the parcel of land which they claim was improperly leased to the Kwale International Sugar Company.

On Wednesday, Mr Justice Festus Azangalala, sitting in Mombasa, certified the matter as urgent and directed that it be advertised in a daily newspaper.

Uprooting

The case has been filed by Mr Rana Ali Mazoa, Ms Tawfiq Amadi, Mr Juma Said and Ms Mwanamkuu Konde on behalf of the residents against the Kwale International Sugar Company, the Commissioner of Lands and the County Council of Kwale.

The judge also granted leave to the applicants to file a representative suit.

Lawyer Mtana Mwamunga, for the complainants, told the court that the sugar company's employees, with authority from the lands office and the county council, had started uprooting crops which his clients depended on for survival.

Displaced

He said that some of the residents, who had lived on the land for more than 20 years, had been displaced and had no alternative site on which to begin a new life.

The land is part of the 15,000 acres allocated to the sugar company after the Government repossessed it from an Indian bank following the collapse of Ramisi Sugar Factory in 1998.

Two weeks ago, the minister for Agriculture, Mr William Ruto, gave the sugar company a one-month notice to highlight the progress they had made on the multi-billion-shilling sugar project, after which the Government would assess whether the company should go ahead with the project.