By P Makumbi
The recent demolitions of structures on a road reserve along Thika Road caused quite an unnecessary uproar.
As usual, the local politicians, after weighing which side of the debate people were on, condemned the demolitions, citing the usual reasons of job losses.
Of course destruction of property is not a good thing, especially when the culprit is the Government. People have invested huge sums of money in putting up these expensive structures, which have now gone to waste.
I heard moans about the millions of shillings that investors lost, the job losses – especially in this day and age when unemployment rates are high and the hardships these people will suffer.
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But we should look at the bigger picture, rather than take this narrow minded approach.
A bulldozer demolishes the Nakumatt store on Thika Road in Nairobi to create room for expansion of the highway. PHOTO: Stafford Ondego/Standard |
There was a time when nobody took the Government seriously, because it was largely composed of people whose sole purpose was to fatten their wallets. But, we are seeing a new lot that is more concerned about the welfare of the people, and this is a good thing. That is why we elect them.
We are seeing an era of accountability slowly taking root, where the people are starting to put pressure on the Government to live up to its promises.
Restore confidence
And the so called donors – I prefer to call them financiers, because what we usually get are loans – are willing to stake their money on huge projects such as the Thika Road one without many of the usual conditionalities.
In other words, they have confidence in the systems we have put in place to ensure that, if we say we want a road from A to B, indeed there will be a road, not some shoddily done track that even cattle are ashamed of using. No more razor thin layer of tarmac roads by cowboy contractors.
Thika Road is used by up to 100,000 cars every day, and I bet this is a conservative figure.
In terms of numbers of people – and my estimate is that, out of every ten cars, at least four are 14 seater matatus – we are talking of upwards of 600,000 people using this road every day.
At the risk of sounding callous and heartless, let me state that the welfare of these people is what we should be more concerned about, rather than the unlucky few who will have lost their property and perhaps their jobs.
Anybody who stays on the Thika Road side of town knows the agony of driving on this road. It is always chock a block with traffic. It just never eases. People take more than two hours to drive 15 kilometers to the city center.
Commitment
God forbid if there is an accident – and they happen all the time because of the road’s bad design – then the traffic queues go on forever. Imagine the cost in terms of manpower and fuel.
Imagine the cost to the environment. Mr Al Gore, the US Presidential race loser turned environmentalist would be aghast if he happened to be stuck in this traffic!
It is therefore my contention that we should be spending more time debating the repercussions of not building the road rather than dwelling on the dramatic demolition of the building housing Nakumatt Thika Road and other buildings along the way. In any case, it is not as if some top Government official woke up one day with a bad hangover and decided that Nakumatt Thika Road has to go down. No.
The structure has always been on a road reserve. The owners have always known they had encroached on a Road Reserve. I bet the landlord and the tenant, Nakumatt, had also been given notice of the demolition.
But like all things Kenyan, nobody took the matter seriously. Many other notices had been issued, ignored and nothing happened. The demolition, serves as a strong reminder that the Government, like the local parlance goes, is not a joke.
