Will the BRT dream be realized soon with all the hiccups?
Kenya is now said to be looking to South Africa to import the Bus Rapid Transport buses despite the project seemingly having taking a nose dive following push and pull between the government and the stakeholders.
According to a senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity, Scania has been a bit slow to act on shipping in the large capacity buses that were to be used for the pilot project.
This prompted the government to go calling on South Africa, ready to import MAN buses for the project.
However, according to experts, the MAN buses were deemed not up to standard and received very little or no local support, further causing more delays.
Transport CS James Macharia says Kenya is importing the first batch of BRT buses from South Africa because the buses those available locally did not conform to the KS-372- body building standardshttps://t.co/Vm2yCAgFOY pic.twitter.com/y2hsaOvdYf
— BusinessDaily (@BD_Africa) January 2, 2019
The move has upset local manufacturers who claim to have the capacity.
“We have the capacity to supply BRT vehicles using the new body building standards, we simply don’t understand why the government is going for South Africa,” says Isuzu EA CEO Rita Kavashe.
— BusinessDaily Africa (@BD_Africa) January 2, 2019
Kenyans have also not taken this kindly and have condemned the government for the move which has been termed as retrogressive and not well thought though since it is going to kill employment and in the end the manufacturers.
This is total rubbish. The president must get rid of these people. From tooth pick , wash hand basin to noodles all imported. Our imports imbalance is now over sh. 750 billion . Where does the song of local manufacturing start and stop?
— Peter k. Ikua (@ikua_peter) January 2, 2019
I agree, We need a @FredMatiangi to tell off the cartels that we must have faith in our local manufacturers. Look at the number of graduates our universities and colleges graduate every year.
Worse still is that we getting them from south Africa surely!— Kagose Erick (@ErickKagose) January 3, 2019