The French government in conjunction with the Kisumu county administration on Monday commissioned the Kisumu Lighting Project aimed at improving the security of Kisumu residents.
Migosi, Jua Kali, Shauri Moyo and 20 other areas received street floodlights contructed under the project.
The project will also open Kisumu County is realizing its hope of being a 24-hour economy with the commissioning of 23 floodlights.
Governor Jack Ranguma said that the floodlights would help achieve a 24-hour economy. Governor Ranguma , who was accompanied by and French ambassador to Kenya Remi Marechaux, told journalists that the Sh100 million projects will help jua kali sector and the market traders in the county do their business easily after the provision of light.
“Our vision of running an economy that does not stop at night is on. The city is now more secure and those business people who feared working at night can now easily do that,” he told residents at Migosi.
Governor Ranguma however blamed the slow pace of completion of county projects transition from the defunct ministry of Local government to the new system.
He said the national government had initially indicated that the ministry would go under the ministry of devolution before it was moved to the Roads ministry.
He said that the lack of a systematic transfer of order of operations from the ministry had caused confusion in the completion of projects that various counties hoped to accomplish with help from different donors.
The Council of Governors Biotechnology committee chairman said that counties could not get into partnerships because of the bureaucracy.
“Counties had to wade through a lot of challenges before the new operations of partnering with donors had not been clearly set out,” Ranguma said.
French ambassador to Kenya Remi Marechaux, who had accompanied the governor in commissioning of the floodlights and open a new water treatment plant at Kasit, said that the rolling out of the partnership had taken long because of the need to negotiate different contracts.
“In the Kisumu Urban plan alone, we had to negotiate 79 different contracts with various companies that have different ways of doing things,” the ambassador told journalists at Migosi.
Describing the Sh4 billion project that involves the acquisition of a new landfill, repair of roads and provision of electricity and clean water as ambitious, the diplomat said that his government would extend the partnership to involve towns bordering Lake Victoria.
“Negotiations have started and we hope to be able to start off this Sh1 billion partnership soon,” he said when he paid a courtesy call on the governor yesterday morning. Marechaux said that he was confident the project would be completed by September 2016.