One of the Jubilee government’s flagship projects is the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) that is being undertaken by the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC). In May, CRBC announced that it had finished 28 % of the roadbed construction for the Mombasa-Nairobi project, 23 % of the construction of the bridges and 29 % of the culverts needed along the line, all ahead of schedule. The project officially started in January 2015 and is scheduled to be finished in 2017. The 472-kilometer Mombasa-Nairobi SGR will cost up to $3.8 billion, with the Import-Export Bank of China covering 90 percent of the funding, while the Kenyan government will fund the remaining 10%. The ambitious project is expected to boost economic growth in Kenya by 1.5 %. This year, Kenya’s Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich announced an allocation of US$1.46bn to the project for the 2015 – 2016 financial year. The SGR is set to pass through Kenya’s oldest and largest national parks, the Tsavo West and Tsavo East National Parks, within Makueni County, which borders Machakos, Kitui and Taita Taveta counties.
Mtito Andei town in Makueni County is one of the towns where the project passes through. The town has seen tremendous socio-economic changes since the project kicked off in January this year. According to locals, the town has had an influx of foreigners lured to the town by the availability of jobs and other business opportunities.
Whereas the SGR project has been a blessing to the town, it has brought with it challenges, chief among them being environmental degradation, break-down in family and societal values, and increased cost of living, among others.
The CRBC had agreed to rehabilitate any negative impact caused by the project but this does not seem to be the case. Some residents fear that there will be more wildlife-human conflicts in the future as a result of the railway project encroaching into the national parks.
Whereas grass has been planted to address deforestation along the artificial embankments, residents complain of failure by CRBC to sprinkle water on the roads to clear the dust. The blasting of rocks in quarries has led to cracking of walls in houses and locals are not sure whether they will be compensated, with the company saying that it will compensate only those within a 300-radius of blasting sites.
One of the biggest impacts of the project has been in terms of creating employment opportunities for locals. By May, CRBC said it had employed 10,889 Kenyans. The company has two factories in Mtito Andei, employing over 1000 skilled and unskilled workers.
The writer spent two weeks in the area in June-July, conducting interviews with residents who were affected by the project’s implementation to bring out the following report.
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David Lazaro Monyani, a resident of Mtito Andei who benefited from the Standard Gauge Railway compensation. He is seen here in his garage in Mtito Andei.
Fifty-two years old David Lazaro Monyani has been living in Mtito Andei for the last 22 years. The coming of the Standard Gauge Railway was both a blessing and a curse to him. The proposed railway line was to pass through his land. He says at first he thought of it as a disturbance, but later on, he came to appreciate the project after officers from the Kenya Railways and the National Land Commission sensitized people on the proposed project and its benefits. He used to live in a place called Shauri Moyo but later on moved to Matulani village, a few kilometres from Mtito Andei town. Even though he was compensated before he relocated, he laments that the compensation did not take into account some of the disturbances they had to face. Monyani, a father of four, is a garage owner in the town. For two months, during which he had to buy land, build and relocate, his garage was closed. “The compensation did not consider the economic disturbance and the opportunity cost that was lost by some of us,” he says. Even though he is grateful for the money he was paid, he wishes that the compensator would give them a breakdown of how the compensation was arrived at e.g. how much was paid for land, the structures thereon and other property on the land, disturbance etc. All the same he is grateful. “The lump-sum payment enabled me to build the house of my dream, I bought a bigger piece of land and build a better house than I had,” he says. He says one of the negative effects of the SGR project was that the cost of land went up twice or even three times its former value. He was forced to pay twice the amount he had initially agreed with the person who sold him land. But on the positive side, he says many young people in the town and surrounding areas are now employed in the two SGR factories in the town, and they are able to support themselves and their families. Festus Mbuni, an official working in the local Member of County Assembly’s office says there has been a rise in demand for accommodation, with property owners converting their buildings from residential to commercial use. “To be sincere, the town (Mtito Andei) did not have enough buildings for rental purposes,” he says. “Every sector – food, clothing, accommodation, has been boosted.” The construction of the railway has also seen an increase in the population of the town. He says the leisure industry has also been affected, with an increase in night activities and an influx of commercial sex workers from other parts of the country, hoping to reap from the fruits of the railway line. ************************************* David Otemba is another resident who was affected by the construction of the railway
David Otemba, a local entrepreneur, whose land was taken for construction of the SGR. He used his compensation money to expand his business and buy more land. He is seen feeding his chicken.
line. He is a businessman who does poultry farming and food production in a small cottage industry in his compound. The construction of the railway line ate into a part of his land. Three quarters of his piece of land was taken. He had to bring down some of the buildings where he kept his chicken and rebuild them on a different part of the land. Because of the short notice (30 days) he was given to bring down some of the buildings on his land, and make adjustments, he could not supply his customers consistently during that transition period. His business competitors took advantage of that lull to fill the gap he had left. Recovering that has not been easy. “I lost important clients who were buying chicken and other products from me,” he says. Yet, he says that the compensation he received has brought a lot of difference in his life. “I used some of the money to pay off bank loans and now I am free of debts from banks,” he says proudly. In one building in his compound, we find workers who are frying and packing potato crisps in polythene bags. In another part of the compound, his wife and some workers are also cleaning chicken ready to be supplied to hotels in the town. “With money, there is nothing that you can’t do,” he says of the compensation money he got, which has enabled him to expand his business and employ additional staff. Otemba, a father of five, says because of the fresh capital that he injected into the business, he now keeps the stock he requires, and he can give credit to his customers without heaping pressure on them to pay for the goods immediately. Like others, he agrees that the compensation has brought tremendous change for those who were directly affected. “Each and every person who was compensated has seen changes in their lives,” he says. He says that currently, it is difficult to hire a fundi because most of them are busy either in individual projects or they are working in the SGR project. Otemba and Festus say that the project has created jobs for many young people and they have observed people’s spending going up, as more money circulates in the town. Besides expanding his business and employing more workers, Otemba also bought a piece of land in western Kenya where he hails from, where he intends to plant bananas, from which he hopes to reap a fortune in future.
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