Rail project is real value for money, says PS

By MWANIKI MUNUHE

KENYA: The construction of the Standard Gauge Railway has raised a major national storm. The Standard on Sunday Senior Writer MWANIKI MUNUHE got hold of Transport Principal Secretary Nduva Muli to respond to concerns raised on the project.    

QUESTION:  Where and when did the whole idea of a trans-national standard gauge railway start?

 ANSWER: It started early in the return of the East African Community as a railway masterplan for the region. The followed the need for a modern, cost-effective and a reliable railway network. The masterplan was approved by the Community Heads of States way before 2008.

On October 28 2008, former President Kibaki of Kenya and Uganda’s Museveni signed a joint communiqué on the construction of a Standard Gauge Railway line (SGR) from Mombasa to Kampala. The hastening of this signing could be attributed to the road trip President Museveni made from Kampala to Nairobi. It became clear that transporting goods by road across East Africa was neither cost-effective nor sustainable.

Now and then, it is worth noting that Kenya Railways Corporation ferried less than two per cent of all the cargo cleared from the port of Mombasa. The rest, more than a disturbing 98 per cent, was hauled and is still being hauled by road.

Due to transport inefficiency in the region, relying on road transport almost exclusively translates to 40 per cent increase in the cost of doing business in all the sectors that rely heavily on haulage of goods.

To what extent did the client, in this case, Kenya Railways, get involved in the conceptualisation of the Standard Railway Gauge project since the very beginning ?

Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC) was involved in the SGR project from the very outset. From the word go, the moment the SGR became an executive national decree of the Ministry of Transport, KRC as the mother agency in matters concerning railway development, was mandated to represent the interests of the Government in this matter. This followed the signing of an MoU between the Government through the Ministry of Transport and a Chinese firm by name China Roads and Bridges (CRB), a corporation owned by government of the Peoples Republic of China.  It is after the signing of the MoU between the two parties that KRC got involved in developing the feasibility study for the segment of the regional railway network that would traverse Kenya’s territory. 

The mandate of KRC was to scrutinise and if and when satisfied, approve the work done by CRB, at every step. Only after KRC experts were fully satisfied with the quality of work delivered at every stage did they convey their report to the Government through the Ministry of Transport.

Allegations to the effect that CRB plunged into the SGR affair having approved and written for themselves terms of reference while the Government agencies concerned were on holiday in Hawaii are wrong.  

Politicians are on record stating that the cost was grossly exaggerated. Why would Kenya’s single lane railway cost much more than the Ethiopian double rail. Does the cost make economic sense?

It has been clarified by the Cabinet Secretary that the projected cost of the Mombasa and Nairobi line will be Sh327 billion and not the fictitious and mischief-laced Sh1.3 trillion being mentioned by politicians. 

Explain to Kenyans how independent oversight concerns touching on the conceptualisation, design, feasibility study and award of tender have been secured over time and step-by-step in the project.

KRC employs professional and competent engineers in its stable of experts. The professionals at and from KRC are at par with their peers in the best work places and industries locally, regionally and within the continent. Depicting such experts hired by KRC as a bunch of charlatans is offensive. Like other professionals all over the world, KRC engineers have a reputation to keep. This is because other sectors in search of their services would blacklist them if they get involved in professional misconduct. In the realm of professionalism, it is on account of how well seasoned an individual is that one gets to scale the ladder of professional recognition. How then could a whole lot of KRC engineers conspire to strip themselves of professional merit by misadvising the Government on the SGR project?

KRC engineers and other professionals gave their opinion and reshaped the preliminary design of the SGR indeed as the case would have been expected to be from a professional point of view.  The supervisory-cum-advisory role offered by KRC experts on the SGR, no less than 50 experts deployed by China’s Exim Bank, the project financier, to further scrutinise and ascertain that the whole project adhered to international standards that would qualify the project for financing.

Cite the benefits envisaged to accrue from this standard gauge railway project upon completion.

 The construction phase alone is itself an economic stimulus, which is expected to deliver not less than 40,000 direct employment opportunities to Kenyans.

Most of the more than Sh300 billion will be spent in Kenya. Such an injection to our economy is enormous and its multiplicative effects will certainly be far-reaching in terms of improving the lives of Kenya economically.  Local industries such as cement manufacturers will benefit immensely and in the process many indirect jobs will be created in their thousands.

Upon completion, the efficiency of transporting goods will be up-scaled and cost of transport of key raw materials and finished goods will be greatly lowered thus further boosting our economic wellbeing as a country.

The cost of maintaining roads across the main corridor will be reduced drastically and the management of road safety programmes enhanced because of reduced number of motor vehicles on the road.  

How does your ministry plan to ensure matters of quality, timeliness, appropriateness of design and proper use of allocated resources are reined in between launch and commissioning of the complete project expected by 2017?

A carefully chosen team of independent experts will continually review and re-evaluate the SGR designs as the construction progresses.

The team will continually confirm to the client, who is the Government of Kenya, that the quality of work done by CRB is of international standards and that the client is getting value for money at every stage.