Clear the air over fate of Mombasa Port

Uganda and Rwanda have jointly sunk the prospects of making the Standard Gauge Railway viable, in effect exposing Kenya to a financial crisis. It had initially been thought that the two landlocked neighbours, and the politically unstable South Sudan, would be party to the mega project.

Inter-connectivity of the countries by rail would mean that all imports for the region entering through the Mombasa Port could easily be placed on the railway – to generate enough revenue to quickly repay the project lenders.

All the while, the three urged Kenya on with consistent assurances that all was well and that they were separately talking to lenders. But the three countries cannot be entirely blamed, considering the speed with which Kenya signed the Chinese offer.

It is plausible to imagine that Kenya, being the Big Brother in the region, may have bullied his smaller neighbours to accept, yet they did not find it in their hearts.

And when the rubber met the road and the reality that the Standard Gauge Railway line was not a priority to them as Kenya had thought, we were left on our own.Tough questions should now be asked why Kenya saw it fit to rush into a project with such financial implications for its future, leaving partners behind.The truth is that such mega projects in a country with so many bribery and kickback scams could be motivation enough to undertake an unnecessary project.

Already, there are unresolved concerns that in this particular project, Kenyans did not get value for money given comparable projects elsewhere. That alone is a pointer to the possibility that huge kickbacks were given to influence the execution of the project, which at Sh380 billion, including cash for compensation for displaced households is way above standard cost.

Already, senior officials in the National Lands Commission have been indicted for inflating the payments to the displaced people, some for plots of land that never existed. As people responsible for our country’s future, all effort should have been placed in evaluating the viability before committing Kenyans to such level of debt.