Blame game over bad roads
What you need to know:
- Class B roads, also known as national trunk roads, link provincial headquarters while class C roads link importnt centres within provinces. Class D roads link locally important centres, while Class E roads are any links to a minor centre.
- “Obviously the amount of money the counties receive is too little and most of it goes to payment of wages anyway leaving very little for development,” Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero told the Sunday Nation.
The ongoing rains have exposed the confusion and overlapping of roles in the construction and management of roads.
Some roads are impassable, and whole homesteads and property are washed away by floods. Now different authorities have started the blame game over whose responsibility it is to manage roads.
There are six classes of roads from A to E and special purpose roads each with a different authorities to construct and maintain them. The system was developed over 30 years ago.
The Kenya National Highways Authority, under the national government, is in charge of class A, B and C roads. Class A roads link centres of international importance and cross international boundaries. They terminate at international ports or airports.
Class B roads, also known as national trunk roads, link provincial headquarters while class C roads link importnt centres within provinces. Class D roads link locally important centres, while Class E roads are any links to a minor centre.
But since the provinces ceased to exist, the national government ceded only class D and E roads to the county governments.
After the floods in Narok town that killed 15 people, Governor Samuel Tunai said poor design of the passage of River Narok under the Enkare-Narok bridge was partly to blame as the channel was too narrow. But Kenya National Highways Authority, through its spokesman Charles Njogu, blames the Narok County government for the situation. “Narok sits on a basin. It is known that the floods there are as a result of heavy rains in the surrounding islands,” he said.
“Ask the (Narok) county government what it is doing about its water drainage systems.”
Although the counties acknowledge their responsibility to manage some of the roads and infrastructure within their jurisdictions, they say they inherited systems that had been neglected for too long and do not have enough money to remedy the situation soon.
AS FAST AS IT SHOULD
“Obviously the amount of money the counties receive is too little and most of it goes to payment of wages anyway leaving very little for development,” Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero told the Sunday Nation.
He added, “In Nairobi we have 2,200 kilometres of roads that we have to maintain and most of these have drainage systems made in the 1960s when it was a small town. It is a challenge.”
The destruction caused by the rains is expected to persist for some time as the Meteorological Department has warned that the towns affected by flash floods are expected to continue receiving heightened rainfall.
“The rains are expected to continue falling in the same amounts countrywide up to the middle of May,” said Samuel Mwangi, the department’s director of weather.
“The rains appear to be amplified in certain areas because of Drainage issues cause by an increase in physical infrastructure which is denying the rain water to seep through the ground. Otherwise it does not mean they are receiving more rains than before because what has increased is the number of buildings,” he said.
