Since its much-publicized inception in 2013, the Standard-Gauge Railway (SGR) has been a cash-cow, where every other person with any semblance of political influence has a field day.
While President Kenyatta deems it as his pet project, the rot underneath the rail, stinks to the high heavens.
Opposition leader, Raila Odinga whom President Kenyatta has an unfathomable dalliance with currently said SGR was a Grand-Coalition government project.
In 2014, Odinga revealed that the SGR was planned and budgeted for when he was still the Prime Minister between the period 2008-2013.
“We negotiated and awarded the tender for Sh227 billion when we were leaving office,” said Orange Democratic Movement leader Raila Odinga, in 2014.
“What Jubilee only did was to retender it to the same contractor but at an inflated price of Sh350 billion. It is the cost that we have a problem with.”
At the time when Odinga and Kenyatta were bitter rivals, the Opposition maintained that the SGR had been taken over by cartels who were on a looting spree.
However, President Kenyatta was quick to rubbish the statements, saying that the Opposition was playing distraction politics with the “well-intentioned project.”
Kenyans only got surprised when the government started receiving diesel locomotives from the port of Mombasa, as opposed to electric ones.
Ethiopia had just completed its project, with a fast-speed electric trains at a cheaper cost, considering the distance of their trains.
Pressured by journalists to answer why the government had settled on the old-school diesel-powered trains, Transport Cabinet Secretary James Macharia concluded that the government would inject another Ksh65 billion to electrify the trains by 2021.
2021 is just a year away from now, and the government was last week in China to source for another loan to extend the SGR from Nairobi to Kisumu through Naivasha.
Pressed with the question on when the government would complete the repayment of the SGR loan, Deputy President, William Ruto at the time angrily reacted:
“The SGR is not a matatu. It is a huge operation and it costs billions to run,” Ruto roared at the journalists.
The government pays the Chinese company running the trains at least Sh 1 billion every year on top of repaying the loan.
At the inflated costs the SGR was built, neighboring countries feared the project, further sinking the old-diesel trains into depression.
Cargo volumes being transported by the rail drastically dropped, triggering the government to impose a law that compels importers to use the rail.
This was met with protests, forcing the government to backtrack, in order to bring all stakeholders on board.
Former National Lands Commission Chair, Mohammed Swazuri was lat week arrested over allegations of fraudulent compensations of SGR land beneficiaries.
The scandal of SGR saga continues.