Tourism investors and environmental conservationists in Malindi town, Kilifi County are a worried lot after land owners at the beach fronts started constructing tall buildings in the area.
They claim that the feeling of trees along the beach to construct the buildings was turning the tourism resort town into a stone jungle that risk scaring tourists away.
Malindi town has over the years been recognized by its pristine beaches and the beach vegetation that investors say is the number one attraction of tourists to the area and most beach hotels enjoy exposure to the beach.
“There was green ocean but now we can see only cement but we need to preserve it instead of constructing tall buildings. This is a place tourists love and when you put too much cement then tourists will run away,” said Rita Valentini, an environmental conservationist adding that the most affected was casuarina beach.
Rita who has stayed in the country since 2008 said that she and her team of conservationists were working hard to keep the Malindi ocean show line and beach clean and green but some greedy individuals had taken over parcels of land adjacent to the beaches and were falling trees and clearing the natural vegetation to construct permanent tall buildings, some of them going beyond five floors.
This she said was working backwards against the push to attract tourists who love the beach hence it was slowly contributing to the economic meltdown in the area as tourists keep off.
“I am not against anyone having the tallest buildings or the most wonderful construction but I think the laws are also to blame because these developers obtain construction permits from the county government of Kilifi and other permits from other agencies. Let the county government change laws or we will lose everything to do with tourism in the near future,” she added.
Kilifi Governor Gideon Mung’aro however, defended his administration saying that the by laws in operations were enacted before who was elected to that position but urged for calm as he tried to address the issue.
“There’s one such issue we are tackling along casuarina beach and it was permitted by the previous regime and once a developer gets a permit and you stop them, they move to court and we have to pay them but what we are advocating for is that developers should desist from constructing tall buildings along the beaches so that those with premises on the second row can also have a view of the ocean,” he said.
He added that tourism had started picking up and that his government and the national government had secured a more than Sh. 5.7 billion Malindi airport expansion deal with Italy so that it can accommodate large airplanes landing directly from international cities.
“I met with the Italian minister for tourism while in Italy in July and you have seen tourists have started flocking this town. We want to expand the airport so that airplanes can land directly here in Malindi,” he said.
