Writes Leo Odera Omolo
SO they came with thud winning mega construction tenders worth billions of dollars on road networks, government buildings and institutions construction while carrying brief-cases swollen with bribe cash money. However, the days of massive influence by big business people from Bringing who have dominated the construction industry in Kenya for decades is soon coming to an abrupt end.
Under the reign of the retired President Mwai Kibaki, the Chinese big business people invaded the Kenyan market
The Chinese contractors fizzled out the traditional Kenya in business partners from Western Europe, especially those from the EU nations which had dominated the construction industry ib Kenya in the pre-independence and post-independence period between 1963 and 2002,
Major construction firms like Mowlem Construction of the UK, Sterling Astaldi of Italy, Israelis solebhonen and other were swept away, as the generous Chinese big business people visited government offices in Nairobi with their hands well oiled with bribe money.
President Mwai Kibaki made several official tours and state visit of China in the company of top government officials and cabinet ministers where he signed numerous bilateral agreement on trade. These missions opened floodgate, and no sooner, the streets of Nairobi, the Kenyan capital and other urban centers were swarmed by Chinese hawkers, hawking with petty wares such as ball pens, mobile phones, radios, watches and other cheap items.
At first, the indigenous Kenyan hawkers in Nairobi streets staged a near violent protest against the Chinese hawkers,
Kenyan businessmen of African origins are up in arms against any more Chinese. The National Construction Authority, the state body that is tasked with the responsibility of regulating guidelines to check on the construction sector and to check the growing Chinese influence on the oriental’s on local construction scene last month came out with the gun blasting.
The authority’s action came as the result of numerous complaints lodged by the local African contractors that the Chinese contractors were taking the lion’s share in nearly all the big construction projects.
The authority recently issued a statement saying that the local construction companies are now edged of public infrastructure work to private virtues. The Authority said it would lobby parliament and the House Committee on delegated legislation to have rules aping the Chinese contractors participation in Kenya building industry.
It reported that both house and the team have agreed that the regulation be published after Easter Monday before being tabled by Parliament.
Among the key concerns raised in the regulation is that at least 30 per cent of the monetary value of a project should go to the locals. This will made possible through joint venture or sub contracting.
Some of the Chinese construction firms undertaking major infrastructure projects in Kenya include China Road and Bridge Corporation and China Wu Yi was to constructed to build the Kshs 4.47 billion standard gauge railway line between Kenya’s port city of Mombasa and Nairobi. But already the parliament is demanding detailed account of how this particular tender contract was dished out and has called for a probe team to be setup
China WU WAS last year named the contractors University of Nairobi’s 22 story Building Complex valued at Kshs 2.3 billion ad another Chinese company China Jiangxi International is the main contractor for the proposed tallest building in Nairobi Hazina Trade Center..
The authority regulation dictate that recruitment or employment of foreign technical or skilled workers on such contracts shall be done on occasions when skills by the foreigners are not avoidably locally..The dishing out the tenders for such project must be approved by the regulating authority. Compulsory training of lower carder construction by the NCA upgrade their standards.
All these strings now being attached to construction industry retargeting to put in check the Chinese excesses.
ENDS