The Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) has called for punitive action to be taken against a contractor who abandoned work on the Enterprise-Likoni road junction overpass, saying it had resulted in major losses for firms.
KAM chairman Sachen Gudka said contractors must be held accountable over timelines set for project completion to mitigate the loss of business due to poor infrastructure.
“Companies have lost about 30 percent of their business due to the bad state of Eastgate Road off Mombasa Road. Trucks now move slowly from Mlolongo to Inland Container Depot (ICD) spending more than three hours on a stretch that would usually be a 15-minute drive,” he said.
Mr Gudka said air travellers using the road to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport were greatly inconvenienced spending two to three hours in traffic gridlocks.
“The trucks heading to ICD are queuing from Mlolongo towards ICD via a diversion as Eastgate is impassable.”
Mr Gudka said that while Eastgate was a classified as a county road, the national government should urgently oversee its repair to save manufacturers and transporters losses related to slow turnaround.
The contract to refurbish the 6.1-kilometre road was awarded in 2013 and set to take a year to complete.
However, the contractor — Nigerian firm Reynolds Construction Company (RCC)— has slowly undertaken the works to put up an overpass over the years.
The Kenya Urban Roads Authority has previously blamed delays on upgrading the key road on differences between the agency and RCC.
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