Standard Gauge Railway contractor, China Roads and Bridges Corporation (CRBC) must be in smiles after the government picked the contractor to operate the line for a five year period.
James Macharia, Transport Cabinet Secretary said that the move was agreed on by the partner states of the Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination, in an effort of ensuring accountability for the Ksh 420 billion project.
The appointment of CRBC to run the SGR for the five years comes after Kenya Railways issued an international tender as it tried to seek an adviser to identify an operator for the new railway line.
“We’d like the person who has done them (SGR) to test them to make sure we don’t have a train flipping because the contractor did a shoddy job,” Mr Machaira said.
According to the transport CS, 80 percent of SGR line construction was complete. Although the government is yet to formalize the agreement, CRBC is expected to commence the new line test in December before the line will be commissioned in June 2017.
Some of the benefit expected from SGR completion include transport cost reducing by roughly 60 percent, freight cost to fall to $0.8 per tonne/Km from USD 0.2 per tonne/Km and finally the average trip from Mombasa to Nairobi and vice versa is expected to average four hours.
The Chinese government financed 80 percent of the project through a Ksh 294.3 billion loan from the China Exim Bank.
By Gabriel Mwandikwa