Scrap metal vandals now eye Thika Rd

By Allan Olingo

The Thika super highway has come as a blessing to many people who reside along the way. It has reduced perpetual jams that clogged the road for hours. But not all are seeing the road for its use. Scrap metal vandals have seen an opportunity to make money by stealing the metal road furniture the contractors are putting up on the highway.

Street light poles, guard rails, sewer covers, bridges, road railings, telecoms equipment, manhole covers, power installations and road signs are just some of the items that are now missing after the scrap metal businessmen harvested them.

In June, Wilfred a blogger with megaprojects.co.ke witnessed a vandalism incident that prompted him to post a campaign against Thika Road vandalism online.

According to Wilfred, the vandals descended on the Kahawa footbridge that had just been completed and started uprooting the metals prompted him to write the appeal: “ Vandalism on Thika Road has to stop if we want to see the project complete.”

Hampering effort

Although, pedestrians are now using the footbridge constructed by the Sino Hydro Corp, there are still some who dash across the highway. Similar to all the other structures in design, the contractor has also provided the ramp for the disabled that has metal, which is now targeted by the scrap metal dealers.

In an interview with a local radio station, Engineer Johnson Matu, the highway’s project director, says that when they started laying the highway lighting cables, about 3km were stolen by vandals, hence hampering the effort of making the highway to international specifications.

“Whenever we put a sign or erected a cable, it was stolen within the hour. This has forced us to use alternative materials such as plastic, which are cheaper than the traditional steel, to discourage theft. We have also raised some of the signs higher so that they are be out of reach to these vandals,” said Matu.

Matu appealed to the Government to ban scrap metal dealers, who, he says, have fuelled vandalism of crucial road furniture such as streetlights, barriers and road signs.

“As a country we don’t produce any metal and it leaves us wondering how these dealers survive in this market without resorting to vandalism. The Government should ban this trade to save our infrastructure.”

Hand over road

The contractors will officially hand over the road to the Government next month, with the commissioning by President Kibaki  expected later in November.

These are just but some of the challenges that the current infrastructural networks across the city and beyond are grappling with as the thirst for scrap metal dealers increases by the day.

In March, the guardrails in the small bridge just after the T-Mall roundabout along Lang’ata Road were stolen.

Later in May, in a brazen theft, the lighting poles along North Airport-Outer Ring Rd roundabout. An eyewitness, who works at the airport, reported seeing several young men carrying away the poles and loading them onto a lorry.

Unconfirmed reports later indicated that the poles were in high demand from scrap metal dealers operating in Mlolongo who were offering the vandals huge sums for the poles and other metals.

In another theft, the railguards of the railway-crossing flyover near General Motors along Mombasa Road as you head towards the airport were carted away, leaving motorists exposed.

Then the Roads minister Franklin Bett called for the banning of the scrap metal business, which he said was contributing to the vandalisation of road signs and road rails.

“It is unimaginable that these vandals have become more confident and are targeting guardrails and signposts erected along Thika Super Highway to sell as scrap metal.

Destroying signs

“As the highway nears completion vandals are destroying signposts, guardrails and drainage systems as they look for metal for sale,” decried Bett.

The minister accused the police of turning a blind eye to this illegal activity as the road furniture was being vandalised.

“Surely by the end of this year, at this rate, we may not have any metal gates in our houses?” the minister posed.
His concern must have landed on deaf ears as vandalisation goes on.

The police on their part accuse the current law for encouraging the scrap metal theft. When caught, the thieves get a slap on the wrist as they are charged with  normal theft, a light charge, says deputy police spokesman Charles Owino.

“This is the reason which makes  them get steal with impunity,” Owino says.

The theft is not a Nairobi problem alone. Early this year, scrap metal vandals stole the Nyali Bridge guardrails in coast.

In July, a power line was brought down when two steel towers were vandalised by unknown people in Lukenya, in Athi River.

“We have lost about Sh6 billion to vandalism in the last ten years while the national economy is thought to have lost Sh11 billion over the same period,” laments Kenya Power managing director, Eddy Njoroge.