Former TLB boss Hassan Ole Kamwaro succumbs to cancer

Former Transport and Licensing Board chairman Hassan Ole Kamwaro has passed on after he succumbed to cancer at the age of 75.

A family member said Kamwaro had been undergoing treatment at the Mercy Hospital in Oklahoma, US.

He had been battling throat cancer, lymphoma, and had been treated at the Texas Oncology Centre in March before travelling to Oklahoma on April 16.

According to the daughter Diana Kamwaro, who was with him in the US, he began his cancer treatment a few days later.

"On April 29, he was admitted at Mercy Hospital, Oklahoma where he started chemotherapy," she said.

She said that on July 19 he developed complications and collapsed.

"He again collapsed last Saturday and was sent to the Intensive Care Unit and on Tuesday evening he succumbed," she added.

REINING IN MATATUS

Kamwaro first joined the TLB board in 1999 when he was appointed by the late William ole Ntimama, who was the Transport minister.

At the time the government had decided to regulated the rogue matatu sector and it was no mean feat.

More uproar in the sector would follow in October 2003 after the Transport minister, late John Michuki, introduced new laws, commonly known as the Michuki rules.

A few months after the rules were gazetted, Kamwaro was made chairman of TLB. Within a year, the mention of Kamwaro's name was enough to send unroadworthy vehicles fleeing.

He resigned in 2007 to challenge his former boss Ntimama for the Narok parliamentary seat.

However, he was dissuaded from joining politics largely by his family and chose to go into business, opening a tourist lodge in the Mara-Olkeju Ronkai. 

In 2010, then president Mwai Kibaki revoked the appointment of Wilfred Lengei and named Kamwaro as the TLB boss.