GARISSA ROAD TRAFFIC JAM, THE MORE REASON WE SHOULD TAKE OUR ENGINEERS TO JAPAN FOR BENCHMAKING.

For a second day running, Garissa Road has been a pain in the neck for motorists for its unendless traffic jams. Commuting on this road especially at the railway crossing  near KVM has become an increasingly hellish experience due to the water logging near Bakex Millers Ltd as well as the newly erected speed bumps at Gretsa University and near National Oil Petrol Station at the Garissa-General Kago Roads junction.

The bone of contention is a very simple and straight forward dilemma of the drainage system. The culvert there is always overwhelmed by the run-off every time it rains leading to water overflowing over the road surface. This creates a pool which most motorists, especially those drive small cars find a hard time maneuvering through. This in turn leads to slowing down of the vehicles behind and eventually piling up to a very long queue of vehicles.

Friday night rained heavily. the resulting to two days of unending jams. On Sunday, motorists were held up in the jam until late in the night. The situation this Monday morning was no different. Vehicles heading to Nairobi started piling up as early as 6:00am in the morning. The problem of this drainage has also affected the nearby National Oil Petrol Station which by the time we went to press, was still waterlogged.

 We encountered some County Government Of Kiambu employees at around 9:00am in the morning to re-direct the water. Well, this eased the excess water that had overwhelmed the culvert draining the water, but that was simply a very temporary remedy to the problem, one which we would call hapa mtaani, 'kujiondoa hapo'. 

This begs for answers on our disaster management strategies. Just a simple drainage problem has been stalling the economy of this country for all these years since it has always been the case for ages.

 Does Kenya really have any qualified road engineers? I have a feeling that all we have are quacks because I believe if there were any, this problem would have been solved long time ago.

I just think that this is the opportune time we advocated for these contractors to go for some ngumbaru classes in places like Japan.

This stretch of the Great Kanto Highway was wrecked by deep chasms in the March 11 2011 earthquake - but was repaired in just six days. You can imagine if this was in Kenya. This would turn out a "VISION 3030" repair project. Yes! non of us and also the next five generations would be lucky enough to it come true if at all small hic-ups like the one near Nampak Kenya Limited has defeated the authorities.

So, instead of our Members of Parliament flying to Ethiopia, India and the Netherlands for cooking bench-marking trips or our MCAs going for field trips abroad to learn how a street light works, I think it will be money well spent if we had to take these engineers to Japan to learn how to repair roads in just six days.