Firm in failed Sh67bn Uhuru Highway upgrade winds up

What you need to know:

The Nairobi Motorway Group has stopped operations and recalled its registration three years after its formation.
The firm was awarded the tender in 2009, but the government cancelled the contract after the World Bank declined to finance it on integrity concerns.
It was to build the Uhuru Highway overpass and the Southern by-pass as part of a 30-year concession deal that included a toll road

A company at the centre of the botched construction of the Sh67 billion Uhuru Highway overpass and the southern by-pass has deregistered its Nairobi office.

The Nairobi Motorway Group, formed by a consortium of international investors led by building giant Strabag, has stopped operations and recalled its registration three years after its formation, according to the Registrar of Companies.

The firm was awarded the tender in 2009, but the government cancelled the contract after the World Bank declined to finance it on integrity concerns about an investor in Strabag.

The bank was also uncomfortable with the impact of the road on the environment and the level of compensation to households and businesses that were to be displaced by the project.

The road has been re-designed and the search for new contractor is on-going, prompting the Strabag-led consortium to call time on their Kenya operations.

“Pursuant to Section 339 (5) of the Companies Act, it is notified for general information that the under mentioned companies are dissolved...Nairobi Motorway Company Limited,” said Colleta Maweu, the Assistant Registrar of Companies through the latest Kenya Gazette notice.

The dissolved firm was to build the Uhuru Highway overpass and the Southern by-pass as part of a 30-year concession deal that included a toll road — where the contactor collects a fee for use of the lane.

According to the shelved blueprint, the project dubbed Nairobi Toll Road would have entailed paving a 77-kilometre overpass between the Athi River Junction on Mombasa Road and Kikuyu on the Naivasha Highway.

Motorists using the facilities would also have had to pay toll fees of about Sh572 a day to the concessionaire.

However, construction of the road failed to take off after World Bank withheld funds. The lender was said to be uncomfortable with Strabag’s handling of the contract after a Russian investor it had blacklisted bought into the project.

In a February 2011 letter to Strabag through Nairobi Motorway, Roads PS Michael Kamau had said: “The WB has formally conveyed to the government the decision that it will not support the project as currently structured.”