Sammy Gachuhi has been appointed the new head of freight operations department at Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC), making a big comeback in the rail sector.
Former Rift Valley Railways (RVR) external affairs and concession manager Sammy Gachuhi has been appointed the new head of freight operations department at Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC), making a big comeback in the rail sector.
Kenya Railways Coproration managing director Atanas Maina said Mr Gachuhi, who was among senior bosses at the defunct RVR who were named in a World Bank report for conspiring to defraud lenders and the Kenya Revenue Authority millions of shillings, joined KRC last month.
“Mr Sammy Gachuhi joined KRC last month and will lead a team of about 55 employees in reviving the freight operations business. This is part of the restructuring strategy, which started a few weeks ago and in line with the public sector human resource management,” said Mr Maina.
The appointment puts Mr Gachuhi in charge of the team charged with reviving the Standard Gauge Rail (SGR) freight business that has been struggling since its launch in January.
The World Bank in a financial report released in January last year found that more Sh16.5 billion loaned to RVR by a consortium of international financiers was plundered.
The reports says that RVR Group and Messrs Sadek, Hassan Massoud, Carlos Andrade, Boong Yoon, Sammy Gachuhi and Fabio Steffler were involved in corrupt,
fraudulent, collusive and obstructive practices in the procurement, financing and import of 20 unit GE B23-7 refurbished locomotives.
RVR bought used SGR locomotives model GE-23 manufactured in 1977 and modified them for use on metre gauge railway.
It is therefore unclear how KRC settled on Mr Gachuhi for the new job before the issues raised in the World Bank report are resolved.
Mr Maina, however, defended the appointment of Mr Gachuhi insisting it was done in accordance with the law.
Kenya terminated the 25-year contract that it signed with RVR to run the Kenya-Uganda Railways last September after the former defunct state corporation failed to solve long standing business disputes with the concessionaire.
Mr Maina and his former RVR counterpart, Isaiah Okoth, agreed that RVR would hand back operations, employees and assets of the 100- year-old railway to the agency within 30 days.
The deal was sealed at the High Court, where RVR had in January rushed to contest Kenya Railways’ impending termination of the contract.
Kenya Railways had cited failure to pay Sh600 million concession fees and missed cargo haulage targets as reasons for the termination. This saw a number of RVR staff join KRC.
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