Of late heavy rains have been pounding the city and other different parts of the country. It has caused havoc in some parts where people and animals have lost lives and there has been a lot of damage to crops and the environment in general. All this has been caused by flash floods.
In our capital city Nairobi, the rains have cased havoc in the following ares:
a) Intermittent black outs – of late in most estates, the residents have suffered so much from black outs such that they have resulted to mpango wa candle, others are forced to rely on mulika mwizi. Any time there is a drought in the country, KPLC starts rationing the electricity and when the rain falls the lights go off, the reason we are yet to be told. I believe the money they collect is enough to solve these blackout problems once and for all. If they can't be able to deliver, then is it possible to have other companies being allowed to operate so as to stop monopoly?
The inefficiency of KPLC to deliver quality services to their customers should be a wake up call to other investors or innovators who should came up with other reliable technologies like the solar energy, wind energy and others which can rely help the people of Kenya as they struggle to achieve the vision 2030 goals.
b) Fare hikes – when it rains, who told the matatu owners, operators and cartels that it rains money in our pockets? The first signs of a drizzle and the fares are doubled. When it rains cats and dogs like of late, they quadruple the fare. The sad thing is that this money never helps them.
c) Heavy traffic jam – don't even mention it, the heavily rained on Nairobians, their pockets and stomachs empty, are subjected to heavy traffic jams which the traffic police like to refer to as a gridlock.
Some of these traffic jams last for hours making the hard working citizens alive home at ungodly hours. Mind you, they have to wake up very early the following day (no, the same day because they sleep past midnight) and board the same extorting matatus, spend several hours again in morning traffic jam before reporting to their places of work looking tired and haggard like someone who has escaped from a horror movie. This is as a result of being tossed up and down on the roads that resembles gnu tracks. Roads covered with deep and dangerous potholes.
Rain is a blessing since the country depends mostly on agriculture. So we can not blame the rains for all these problems. We only need to be innovative and proactive. Like now, we should be trapping the rain water that is going to waste so that we can use it latter for farming during the dry seasons. But now, we are busy politicking for 2012 elections. Nothing else is in our minds.
I am also yet to understand what causes the so called gridlock when it rains. I suggest the government needs to work extra hard in removing all the unroadworthy vehicles. They are the source of jam. You find many being dragged along by others... it's as if they also feel cold, others runs out of fuel. the matatu operators must also stop treating their vehicles like a stove! they refill with very little fuel insufficient to reach the destination.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing is that everyone tends to be in a scramble to reach home. Some even going to an extent of overlapping which results to collisions, the consequences you know.
The whole solution is in us
I agree with you Peter. What I think is that we need a lot of physical planning in Kenya instead of doing our things in a jua kali way.
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