Dinah Chesister, 34, a mother of four, spends the better part of her day crushing stones in a small quarry on the Makutano-Lodwar highway at Sebit in West Pokot County.
This is a common activity for many women in Sebit and Ortum along the highway, forced by tough economic conditions to abandon their traditional household care duties and venture into the backbreaking trade.
Dinah Chesister, 34, a mother of four, spends the better part of her day crushing stones in a small quarry on Makutano-Lodwar highway at Sebit in West Pokot County, occasionally joining other women as they sort and display the ballast on the roadside for sale to potential buyers.
This is a common activity for many women in Sebit and Ortum along the highway, forced by tough economic conditions to abandon their traditional household care duties and venture into the backbreaking trade.
The men shun the tough stone crushing trade and instead concentrate on grazing livestock — their main source of income — and protecting the community from aggressors in the banditry prone area.
“We buy the stones in blocks of Sh1,300 or more from the landowners or diggers then use hammers to break them down into gravel ready for sale. A 20-litre bucket goes for Sh150 or less, depending on market demand,” says Ms Chesister.
Sometimes the women go for weeks without making a single sale, despite spending many hours in the gruelling stone-crushing works.
Sebit and Ortum are rich in limestone, the basic raw material for cement processing.
The community had anticipated hundreds of jobs on the promise of the construction of a cement factory in the area a decade ago, but this hope has turned to despair, forcing women like Margaret Jairo to the roadside to crush ballast.
“It is like living close to a river but washing hands using spittle. These areas are limestone-rich but no investor has set up a factory to help transform our economy. We, therefore, have no option but to break down the valuable resource into ballast to earn a living,” said Ms Jairo, who trades limestone in Kapng’arng’ar along the highway to Lodwar.
Limestone deposits stretch on both sides of the Kapenguria-Lodwar highway from Chepareria to Ortum, a distance of 30 kilometres.
Feasibility studies by the government identified large deposits of limestone in the Ortum-Sebit area in Pokot Central, enough to sustain production of 300,000 metric tonnes of cement annually.
The news of the potential construction of a cement factory a decade ago was received with high hope by the residents who hoped to gain economically and socially, through business and jobs, among other things.
The factory was to be put up by Cemtech Ltd, a subsidiary of Sanghi Group of India, which had already received all the required documents from relevant departments of the Kenyan government.
The group was to put up an ultra-modern, environmentally friendly cement factory, along with staff houses, schools, medical centre, staff training facility and other amenities on 650 acres of freehold land, which the firm had purchased from the locals.
As part of the project plan, the group was also to put up a 64-megawatt power plant, where 14 megawatts were for use in the plant and 50 megawatts for sale to the national grid.
The factory was expected to directly employ 1,200 people once fully done and benefit another 40,000 residents of the arid region indirectly.
Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga launched the construction of the factory at Sebit centre in July 2010.
No work has taken place to date. The only activity on the land is levelling of the ground in preparation for the construction of the plant.
However, there has been some positive movement on the long-awaited project in recent days. This is after Simba Cement, which Kenyan businessman Narendra Raval owns, bought out Cemtech and is now in the advanced stages of reviving the cement factory project.
For business people who have camped in the area since 2010 to cash in on the building of the factory, it has been a painful lesson.
Many came in immediately after the commissioning and put up business premises and rental houses targeting factory workers.
“The entrepreneurs expected their businesses to improve and the entire economy of the area to grow, only for things to go south. People have lost hope,” said Thomas Lireng, a businessman at Sebit trading centre.
They now hope that the acquisition by Simba Cement, which has had a good track record of implementing similar projects in previously untapped locations such as Nakuru, will soon revive the long-awaited project.
Simba Cement acquired 100 percent of Cemtech business and assets and expected to commence the construction works of the cement factory last year.
The company has had to carry out public participation and consultative forums with the local leaders after it received a licence to construct the cement factory.
The areas where the firm has been given rights to operate include Puseli, Chepkol, Sebiit, Ortun, Iyon and Marich in the Ortum belt.
When Mining and Petroleum Cabinet secretary John Munyes toured Sebit to unveil plans to put up the cement factory in 2019, he said the construction process would take 18 months once all licences were granted and the public participation process was completed.
For residents, examples elsewhere point to the impact that such a plant can have on the local economy.
For instance, Simba Cement’s Sh6 billion, 750,000-tonne capacity Nakuru plant in Salgaa on the Nakuru-Eldoret highway has created at least 1,000 direct jobs.
Such a plant also generates hundreds of additional indirect jobs as the workers have to be housed, fed and entertained. Transporters also benefit from contracts to move the cement and bring supplies to the employees.
Athi River town, which has grown into a bustling urban centre, thrives on the back of the several cement factories operating in the area, with nearby satellite towns such as Kitengela and Mlolongo also benefiting hugely from the resources of cement factory workers.
