CS James Macharia should crack the whip or quit

The Transport docket, currently under Cabinet Secretary James Macharia (pictured), has over the years manifested more dark than bright hues.

Let me explain. Among the uncommon bright hues is the 50km Nairobi-Thika Super highway built at a modest cost of Sh32 billion between 2009 and 2012 under the grand coalition government of former President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

The bypasses conceived when Raila Odinga was Minister for Roads and Housing in the short-lived Narc government between 2002 and 2005 have eased transport not only in Nairobi and its environs, but in other major towns as well.

Thanks to Raila’s firmness, structures built on road reserves, regardless of the owners’ muscle, came tumbling down, clearing the way for the thoroughfares. A bright hue.

The late no-nonsense Transport and later Environment Minister John Michuki is credited with injecting a degree of sanity in the public transport sector.

In Environment, Michuki came close to bringing the Nairobi River back to life. His fetes, unfortunately, did not outlive him with matatu chaos back full blast and the relapse of the river from which Nairobi draws its name into a virtual sewer.

But the transport sector remains in the entrails of menacing clouds, save for an ephemeral stint after the 2002 General Election that left Kenyans effervescing with unprecedented patriotism to the extent of arresting corrupt traffic police officers at road blocks. Sadly though, the new found patriotic chauvinism passed like a meteor, practically unnoticed.

The Uhuru/Ruto-era Standard Gauge Railway built largely under Macharia’s watch quintessentially typifies a dark hue, given its stratospherical cost and abrupt termination in the barren Naivasha jungle.

Not only have bribes and road carnage flooded back with alarming impact, enforcement of rules remain only in dust-gathering books and the internationally controlled air transport. Safety regulations in the highways and water have remained but a mirage and the latest Likoni disaster is just the tip of the iceberg in a monstrous scenario.

Sample this true life experience. To have a glimpse of what boat passengers go through in Lake Victoria, I once sailed for long hours in crowded rickety vessels from Mbita through Takawiri, Mfangano, Remba, Nyandiwa and Migingo with my heart stuck in my mouth.

Angry waves would splash into us and on two occasions, an engine frighteningly stalled in the open lake. Wait! None of the vessels had safety jackets. We were at the mercy of the gods. Does Macharia know that to this day, a majority of boats plying Lake Victoria and other Kenyan water bodies, including the Indian Ocean, do so minus safety jackets?

And what a shame that Kenya Ferry Services (KFS) has the temerity to run ostensibly unseaworthy vessels without any safety measures in place 15 years after 270 Kenyan lives were lost in the Mtongwe ferry tragedy? Was nothing learnt from that disaster? Yet Macharia and KFS Managing Director Bakari Gowa pose as though everything is normal. The CS is yet to visit the accident scene.

In jurisdictions where every life is valued, heads would have long rolled in the recklessness that is the Likoni cataclysm and Mtongwe before it with the coxswain and other crew facing murder charges. It is a pity nothing like that happens here. Where is our conscience!

Our roads are nothing but stretches of guillotines. Kenyans the other day woke up to breaking news about the loss of 13 lives at Awasi in a collision between a bus and a track on the Kisumu-Kericho road as the bodies of Miriam Kighenda and her four-year-old daughter, Amanda, froze untraceably in the ocean deeps.

Media headlines

Bloodbath on our roads is such a frequent occurrence that it rarely invokes media headlines these days. It is chilling to think that the Government seems to have given up after the disgraced National Transport and Safety Authority and traffic police seemed to exacerbate the problem, hence their slipshod withdrawal that has not yielded any solution.

As the Minister for Transport, it behooves Macharia to take personal responsibility for Likoni and other unfortunate incidents under his watch and take action by sacking those below him who are sleeping on the job or just resign.

That aside, Macharia ought to explain the fate of the much-hyped Nairobi Metropolitan region Rapid Bus Transit system for which lanes have been marked on selected routes and left to fade in the elements.

Was it hot air? A bad joke? He must swallow his pride and apologise to suffering Nairobi residents who have watched in dismay as their city is overtaken by Dar es Salaam, Kigali and Addis Ababa on the public transport front.

Mr Ombuor is a Senior Writer for The Standard. [email protected]