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Writer's pictureMoses Wasamu

Standard gauge railway project a mixed bag for residents of Mtito Andei


Joshua Kithome Kasovo, whose school had to relocate after a big part of his land was taken by the standard gauge railway project. He suffered a big loss after over half the student population refused to move to the new location.

Joshua Kithome Kasovo, whose school had to relocate after a big part of his land was taken by the standard gauge railway project. He suffered a big loss after over half the student population refused to move to the new location.

In another part of the town, Joshua Kithome Kasovo, 68, still laments how the project has had a negative impact on his school-running business. It forced him to make changes which he had not anticipated. He is the owner of Mtito Andei Christian Primary School, which was forced to relocate as a result of the railway project passing through its former premises. As a result of the relocation, the number of learners in the school dropped from 225 to 116. Out of all the classrooms that were on his land, only three were not affected after the project ate into three-quarters of his land. The three classrooms are now used by the lower classes. The upper classes relocated 3 kilometres away in a place called Matulani, where he has to rent premises. “We now have to bear the additional cost of taking the upper primary children to school 3 kilometres away, and providing lunch for them,” he laments. He says that some parents were not happy with the abrupt changes and refused to move their children to the new location, and thus they lost the children, who opted for schools closer to the town. Like many others, he says they were given a short notice and he claims the compensation did not cater for the loss he incurred as a result of losing ongoing business. Much as he was forced to make abrupt changes, Kithome still hopes the railway will have a positive impact in the future, because he sees it leading to an increase in the town’s population, which will likely lead to an increase in number of children, who will hopefully enroll in his school. On a positive note, he says that the project has brought a lot of benefits to the locals. “The town is expanding, many investors are coming in, there are no longer vacant plots in the town,” he says. “Today, unless you have more than Ksh. 500,000, you can’t get a plot of 50m by 100m in town.” In the neighbouring location, another family whose life was disrupted is that of Patricia Mwanza, whose land was taken over by the railway construction, and she was forced to go back to her parents-in-law’s home, where she now stays in a mabati house with her family of one husband and four children. Her children have to walk for more than 8 kilometres every day to and from school. The children are in class six, four, two and in nursery school. Six months later, they are yet to get land to buy and build a house, since the cost of land has shot up, unlike she had projected. She had anticipated to buy land at Ksh. 100,000 per acre but now the cheapest land she can get goes for Ksh. 200,000. “Once I buy land and build a house, that is the time I will settle down,” she says. *************************************


Peter Kisoi (in red T-shirt), Nzuki Ndaka (right), chairman of Hillside Market Centre,  and the reporter. Hillside Market centre is one of the centres that have been revived by the SGR project.

Peter Kisoi (in red T-shirt), Nzuki Ndaka (right), chairman of Hillside Market Centre, and the reporter. Hillside Market centre is one of the centres that have been revived by the SGR project.

At the time I met him, Peter Kisoi had been looking for a house to rent for a month at Hillside town. All his efforts bore no fruit. He will now be forced to stay in a lodging house for the one month that he will be staying in the small town a few kilometers from Mtito Andei town. He comes from Wote, a town hundreds of kilometers away. He is a self-employed skilled worker who was coming to the town for a short-term contract. He was hoping to pay Ksh.2000-3000 for the month, if he got a self-contained room. But since he has to find accommodation in a lodging house, he will have to pay between Ksh.9,000-10,000 for one month. The last time he was here in February, lodging a room cost Ksh. 120 a night. This has now shot up to Ksh. 300 per day. These are the effects of increase in the population of the town, which now has many new residents, who have taken up all the accommodation in the town. Hillside town is one of the towns that has been revived as a result of the SGR project in Mtito Andei. It is a town on the old Mombasa-Nairobi highway, which was abandoned some 10 years ago when the current Nairobi-Mombasa highway was constructed. According to Nzuki Ndaka, the chairman of Hillside market, this development, together with the closure of many of the railway stations of the former Kenya Railways, led to the decline of many towns, including Hillside and Kathekani. He says many people moved out of the town when the operations of the former Kenya Railways went down, and when the highway was relocated to its present site. He says previously, the town was sustained by road and railway transport. But the coming of the SGR has seen dramatic reversal of some of these negative effects in the town centres around Mtito Andei. They are now bubbling with life, thanks to the many workers who are employed in the two SGR factories in the area, who either live in the adjacent towns or who spend their money there. “When the old railway went down, it went away with people, and the economy in this area went down,” says Nzuki, the chairman of Hillside Market. “The new railway project has revived this town. The factories have employed many people and created employment for our youth,” he adds. He says that the railway project has led to increased population in the area, the number of new shops and businesses has gone up, and residential houses that were previously vacant are now occupied. “It has led to transformation of lives, some of the people have build houses and bought motorcycles and other things which they could not afford previously,” he says. Nzuki says that the small town has seen a rapid increase in population since the railway project began. He says one of the effects of this can be seen in the housing sector, where the cost of renting houses has gone up from between Ksh. 200-500 per month, to between Ksh. 1,500-2000 per month. He says there is more economic activity in the town, compared to a couple of years ago. He says even the cost of lodgings has gone up in the town as a result of increased demand. But in spite of these positive developments, Nzuki says because of the work going on in the area, and the heavy vehicles driving on the roads, there is a lot of environmental pollution from dust going up in the air. He says the SGR needs to tarmac the roads as part of its corporate social responsibility to the community. Further, he says that tremors that are caused by blasts in some quarries are destroyong houses. In Miangeni High School, the blasts have caused cracking of classroom walls and the walls of the water tank constructed in a corner of the school compound. Noise pollution is another negative effect of the construction project. According to the school head, the blasts which used to happen during the day disrupted learning in the school, and led to some of the students suffering from trauma The residents are apprehensive that they may not be compensated for the cracks on their houses, because the National Environmental Management Authority says only those within a radius of 300 metres of the blast sites will be compensated. Nzuki is appealing to the government to intervene so the SGR can reconsider this, since many houses, as far away as one kilometer away from the blasting sites, have been affected.

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