Kenya’s standard gauge Railway was built from Mombasa to Nairobi and its second phase is to stop at Kisumu leaving out the stretch to malaba.

Okoth sits on the physical infrastructure committee of parliament said that there could be geo-politics by Kenya to delay its SGR to reach Uganda boarder at malaba and he called government to investigate and sort out this.

However, okoth said that government needs to sensitize the people compensated for the land where such projects are going to pass because when they get huge money they are not used get excited and misuse it.

He added that people in his area where this SGR is going to pass were conned by traditional witch doctors whom they went for to ensure that they change the minds of surveyors using the spirits so as the SGR pass through their land and also get such money.

Government approved a loan of 45.5 billion shillings for construction of the standard gauge railway but the project stalled because of the delay by Exim bank of china to release the required funds.

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Allen Kagina the Executive Director of UNRA.

Kagina said this as she was appearing before parliament’s accountability committee as members on the committee raised queries on why the authority had to hire another consultation firm for the Kampala express high way yet there was a Chinese firm that had already done the same work.

The members also found that in the auditor general’s report of 2013/ 2014, it was revealed that government paid 2.3 million dollars per kilo meter on this road yet the same road in Ethiopia with the same terrain cost 1.2 million dollars.

Kagina in her response informed the legislators that UNRA had very little to do in negotiating contracts as this was a direct procurement where it was agreed between government and Exim bank that both the contractor and consultant had to come from China.

This she said was the reason they hired another consultant to compare what had been provided to them and promised to look into both work to see whether the auditor general’s query was right.

She however, agreed with the committee that in the future such agreements need to be avoided.

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