Coast crying out for better services and infrastructure

Amid repeated calls for the revamping of tourism at the Coast, the region is today convulsed in misery as a result of generally crumbling infrastructure and poor provision of services.

Sadly, the region’s woes have in recent times been aggravated by serious water and electricity supply problems as well as by alarming crime figures, partly as a result of burgeoning youth unemployment.

So serious is the situation down at the Coast, in fact, that few recent visitors to Mombasa County, for instance, will have failed to cringe at the sorry state of affairs there, what with ubiquitous heaps of uncollected garbage even in the town centre.

Apart from residents and visitors alike being suffocated by acrid stenches, the town and the county have for a long time been beset with serious water and electricity supply problems.

Regarding water shortages, the situation is currently desperate, with taps in most estates perennially dry. According to recent reports, among the most affected residential areas are those in the Changamwe and Jomvu sub-counties.

In what seems to be a pervasive crisis, residents of Bangladesh, Mikindani and Jomvu are also experiencing serious water woes, alongside those of Bamburi, Kisauni, Kongowea and Likoni, among others.

As a direct consequence of the water shortages, the entire Mombasa County has in recent times had to contend with the resultant health problems, including recurrent outbreaks of hygiene related diseases such as cholera.

In the meantime, as the water shortage continues to wreak havoc, the Mombasa Water Supply and Sanitation Company has maintained a deafening silence, like many other bureaucracies charged with the provision of public services. Characteristically, since its establishment in March 2011, the company is still not living up to its mandate since formally taking up the operation of water and sewerage services in Mombasa County on September 1, 2005.

POWER BLACKOUTS

As for electricity supplies, in a region in which power blackouts have for eons been the order of the day, a recent statement by the national distribution company Kenya Power was like balm to the residents.

The gist of the statement, which was presumably taken with a pinch of salt by the long-suffering and cynical coastal communities, was that the region will as soon as next month benefit from up to 20 transformers on the North Coast alone.

Apart from the installation of the new transformers, the power company reportedly said it was upgrading existing transformers during a major maintenance project. At the same time, distribution lines will also be upgraded, while new low and medium voltage lines will be provided with a view to easing the acute pressure on the region’s power supply network.

Should these welcome developments materialise as promised, residents of the affected areas will be assured of a long-yearned-for reliable supply of electricity. That eventuality will be a far cry from the power outages that have dogged the Coast for as long as anybody can remember.

Sadly, though, nobody seems to have carried out a reliable audit of the economic losses incurred during the decades of excruciatingly constant and lengthy blackouts, although players in the tourism industry have for a long time decried the unreliability of power supplies.

While these stakeholders have catalogued the resultant losses, other electricity users in the region, both individual and commercial, seem to have quietly resigned themselves to what they have seemingly accepted as their fate.

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