The Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA) management under Director General Eng. Silas Kinoti has failed to come up with preventive measures to curb rampant road signage vandalism in the country. Failure by Eng. Kinoti to introduce preventive measures to curb rampant road vandalism has forced the ministry of transport and infrastructure to pay for the costly repairs.
Rather than offering Ksh. 100 to anybody with information that will help apprehend the vandals, KURA should come up with a master plan to have a surveillance system and at the same time put in place a compliance team whose mandate should be to arrest and charge the culprits. It is important that Eng. Kinoti and his team changed tactics and moved away from their verbal calls urging members of the public to volunteer information on any case of vandalism to help avert safety threats posed by poor roads and hire services of either Kenya Police or private security firms to guard and protect against vandalism.
Kenya Urban Roads Authority Director General Eng. Silas Kinoti
It is cheaper to have such a team in place as compared to the cost of repairs which runs into millions of shillings. It is worth noting that in less than four months, records indicate that Kura spent Ksh. 5m in replacing 30 street poles in Nairobi only. Although Eng. Kinoti has been quoted saying they have intelligence reports that vandalism being experienced on major roads and highways in Nairobi are well planned and executed by organized criminal gangs, one wonders why he has not acted on the intelligence to apprehend the culprits.
Not unless Kura moves with speed to tame the vandals who are targeting Nairobi’s major roads such as Thika Super-Highway, Outer Ring-Road and Langata road among others, the government will continue to spend millions of shillings in maintenance rather than developing and improving our roads.
There have been concerns over the manner KURA has been spending donor funds with reports indicating that there was no value for money realised over the construction of the newly built footbridge along the Eastern Bypass Road around city Cabanas areas as well as the maintenance of the Nairobi Outering road.
