Excessive demands by communities a threat to major infrastructure projects
What you need to know:
- Today, you cannot complete a major infrastructure project without encountering some lobby group bent on organising rural communities to block it using one excuse or another.
- The standard gauge railway line is going to run through 600 kilometers of space before reaching Nairobi.
- What if every community along the line was to come up with its own parochial demands?
I am beginning to have doubts as to whether the Standard Gauge Railway project will be completed within the time-frame set by the government.
With only a few months left in 2014, the indications are that we are still far away from signing off the financial agreements to enable us to access the money the Chinese have committed.
The last I heard was that the government had formed a 13-man committee mandated to work out how we can quickly implement the tough conditions the Chinese have imposed on their loans.
The full name of the team is the “Committee on implementation of conditions precedent to disbursement of the preferential buyer credit” from Exim Bank of China.
Clearly, the Chinese are not in this thing for philanthropy. The gifts from the dragon come with very stiff conditions.
From the implementation matrix I have seen, it is seems the process of signing off disbursement of the money could drag into the end of the first quarter of next year.
Politics is also a big issue. The constitutional reform process we have gone through has left our people with an exaggerated sense of rights.
USING EXCUSES
Today, you cannot complete a major infrastructure project without encountering some lobby group bent on organising rural communities to block it using one excuse or another.
Currently, the Indian contractors building the Mombasa-Nairobi power transmission line is unable to reach Embakasi because the elite around Kajiado have mobilised the communities to demand higher compensation rates. The Maasai claim the Kamba were paid more.
The politics around acquisition of way–leave has become intense. We all remember how the agitation of communities around Olkaria and Suswa areas almost crippled geothermal projects.
In Ukambani, the MP for Kibwezi West, Dr Patrick Musimba, is leading a movement to rally the communities there to “defend” the rights of the people over way-leave rights for the railway project.
On Tuesday, he purchased expensive advertising in three daily newspapers to invite all grassroots leaders to a meeting in Kibwezi to discuss the issues.
The list of the demands are very long.
They want an environmental impact assessment for the Kibwezi area. They want bush clearing contracts to be awarded to local businessmen. They also want contracts for supply sand and ballast.
DILATORY TACTICS
I am not opposed to the demands of the people of Kibwezi. Indeed, it does not make sense to merely parachute a project which you know will disrupt life within the community without first securing a buy-in from local leaders.
Where I disagree with contemporary way-leave politics is the tendency to parochialise issues — the propensity to introduce excessive demands and to adopt dilatory tactics.
The standard gauge railway line is going to run through 600 kilometers of space before reaching Nairobi. What if every community along the line was to come up with its own parochial demands?
Which brings me back to the prospect of delays and the hurdles on the way of the standard gauge railway.
This is the largest infrastructure project in years. The financial implications and the impact on external debt service will be.
We are borrowing a commercial loan of $ 1.6 billion plus a commercial loan of a similar amount from the Chinese.
When they tell you that this is “government to government” deal, the intention is to hoodwink you into believing that the Chinese are doing us a favour.
The loans from Exim Bank will see our external debt increase from Sh878 billion to Sh1.16 trillion — just Sh44 billion below the statutory ceiling of Sh1.2 trillion set by Parliament.
We have to acquire 2,253 hectares of land at an estimated cost of a whopping Sh8 billion for the railway line.
And, the Embakasi internal container terminal will have to be expanded to handle the anticipated number of containers.
That expansion will cost Sh10.6 billion. Another Sh1 billion will be spent in acquiring land for expanding the terminal.
Clearly, this massive project is going to stretch the capacity of the government to manage it to the limit.
