Treasury proposes Sh1.3bn in Budget to buy new ferries

The cash-strapped Kenya Ferry Services will receive Sh1.3 billion in next month’s Budget for the purchase of new vessels.

According to the Budget estimates presented in Parliament last week, the National Treasury will also allocate Sh143.7 billion to the standard gauge railway which will speed up the movement of goods and people between Mombasa and the rest of the country.

The Kenya Ferry Service (KFS) has over the years struggled to improve services across the Likoni and Mtongwe channels and the last time it bought new vessels was during President Mwai Kibaki’s tenure when two ferries were imported from Germany.

KFS Managing Director Musa Hassan Musa had on Wednesday lamented that the parastatal was underfunded. He was speaking on the anniversary of the 1994 ferry disaster in which 272 people died when MV Mtongwe One sank.

“First of all, the Kenya Ferry Services is underfunded by the national government. Secondly, it cannot raise revenue because it offers free services to users,” Mr Musa said.

KFS is the only one in the world that does not charge users to ferry them across the channel. Upto to 300,000 people cross the channel every day, free of charge.

How did it all begin?

“It was in 1969 when the first President, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, made a tour here and found people being charged to cross,” Mr Musa said. “He issued a decree that from that time on, no one should pay.”

MAKING LOSES

At the time, each person used to pay Sh6.50 to cross the channel. The services that time were being operated by the Kenya Bus Service — now defunct. KBS abandoned the service in 1989 because it was making loses.

The Presidential decree came with a special arrangement that the government would release Sh200 million annually to the KFS to maintain its vessels and buy new ones. This agreement, however, was honoured for only two years. This was to mark the beginning of the financial crisis at KFS.

Apart from MV Kwale and MV Likoni which were purchased in 2010, the rest of the vessels are obsolete, having been in operation for more than 30 years.
Mr Musa said the KFS cannot start to charge users because the decree by President Jomo Kenyatta has never been revoked.

“It is the only ferry service in the world that is free of charge. I have gone to numerous countries in the world which operate such services and none of them do it for free,” he said.
The decision on whether to introduce fare or not, he said, would have to be made by the government.

“Ours is simply to implement,” he said.

The Mombasa County government has been seeking to run the service and Mr Musa said there would be changes in its management once the service is devolved.

Mr Musa told a meeting at the ACK Guest House, which had been called to endorse a project to install cables cars that would offer services across the Likoni channel that there was no money to buy a new vessel for the Mtongwe channel.

The following day, the Budget estimates showing that KFS would be allocated Sh1.3 billion was tabled in the National Assembly for debate.

However, Musa told the meeting that the government had procured two additional ferries for Likoni ferry channel which are expected in Mombasa in the next 16 months.

“The two ferries when they arrive will go a long way in solving the frequent congestion because they have bigger carrying capacity for passengers and vehicles, bigger than MV Nyayo” he said. MV Nyayo is currently the biggest vessel across the channel. The ferries that will cost about Sh7 billion will have the capacity to carry 1,800 sitting passengers.