Kenya Railways takeover of SGR at 90pc – Mainga

The government has taken over 90 per cent of the operations of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) from the Chinese authorities.

Kenya Railways Managing Director Philip Mainga said the remaining percentage under the control of the Chinese government will be surrendered to Kenya by next year.

Appearing before the Public Investments Committee on Commercial Affairs and Energy, Mainga said the project’s performance has been impressive over the years and assured the corporation will thrive to maintain the same standards.

“We have taken over the operations of SGR. We are now at 90 per cent. In terms of the operations we believe in the next financial year we will have a comfortable report,” Mainga told the MPs.

Losses dropped

He said the corporation has been projecting an upward trajectory in reducing operation losses and liabilities since financial year 2018/19.

In her report for the 2020/21 financial year, Auditor General Nancy Gathungu said the corporation’s losses had dropped from 9.8b to 4.4 billion.

Mainga told the committee 90 per cent of the revenue collected came from cargo and 10 per cent from passengers.

“During the year under review KRC managed to handle 2.3 million passengers and the number is expected to rise in the current financial year,” Mainga revealed.

He told the committee, chaired by Pokot South MP David Pkosing, the huge drop in liabilities has been occasioned by the take-over of the core business of the SGR.

However, the legislators were dissatisfied with the operations of SGR which they said was clandestinely done with little information coming out for scrutiny.

Full scrutiny

Ugunja MP Opiyo Wandayi questioned why SGR contract has never been made public to help Kenyans understand the project where their taxes were sunk. “Kenyans need to know how their money is being utilised, unfortunately on SGR, it remains a top secret and, therefore, its operations cannot be interrogated,” he said.

“Is it possible that you can help this committee to understand this SGR project? There were attempts to make the contract public by the current administration but it turned out to be protective shielding the real owners,” he added.

Wandayi, who is the National Assembly minority leader, said MPs needed to be provided with the original SGR contract for them to undertake full scrutiny.

However, much to the dismay of the MPs, Mainga said the corporation was not in the possession of the SGR contract even as it took over the day-to-day operations.

“I just want to say humbly that I am not in possession of this contract and, therefore, I can’t promise to give it,” Mainga said.

Gathungu also highlights the issue of illegal allocation of land belonging to the corporation valued at billions of shillings.

“As reported previously, various parcels of land were allocated to third parties without the consent of the corporation by either the Commissioner of Lands or the defunct local Authorities,” she said.

Court intervention

For instance, land within Limuru railway station constituting nine industrial plots measuring approximately three acres; a piece of land within Kikuyu railway station measuring approximately two acres and parcels of land adjacent to Mombasa station measuring between 0.75 and one acre have been irregularly allocated to third parties with some having been developed.

Further, another 529 parcels of land have been illegally allocated across the country. However, Management has sought court intervention to repossess 27 parcels of land.

Mainga said the corporation was in the process of recovering the land parcels in all the affected areas covered by the railway.