The team leading the regeneration of Nairobi Friday committed to ambitious timelines for the delivery of key services, ranging from garbage collection to launching a mortgage refinance company.
The regeneration team comprising the national and county leaders and co-chaired by Governor Mike Sonko and Tourism CS Najib Balala met President Uhuru Kenyatta to agree on their commitments.
Importantly, officials leading on specific delivery programmes from both the national and county governments committed to resigning if targets were not met.Cabinet Secretaries and Principal secretaries working on the project would hand in their resignation to the President while County Executive Committee (CEC) members will hand in their resignation to the governor if they fail to deliver.
The team said garbage would be cleared from all 85 electoral wards in Nairobi within 30 days, and a clean-up of Nairobi river would also started.
More ambitiously, the team would oversee the launch of the Kenya Mortgage Refinance Company, which is at the heart of delivering affordable housing.Affordable housing is in the President’s Big Four agenda of putting a roof over many more Kenyans heads, availing healthcare, ensuring no one goes hungry, and creating jobs through increased manufacturing.
Nairobi, alone, is projected to provide 200,000 new affordable homes under this programme. Agreements with financial institutions on funding 100,000 units would be signed in 90 days.
The team also said the automation of bus terminal, launch of the Thika bus rapid transport and set up of the Nairobi traffic management committee to deal with lengthy traffic jams would happen within a month.The team said it had a second target of three months, during which it would equip high-volume health centres as well as improve trauma services at Mbagathi and Mama Lucy hospitals to ease pressure on Kenyatta National Hospital.
The President told the team he had visited the hospital that bears his name incognito, and was not pleased by the intense pressure he found on facilities.
“Most of the pressure requires more accident and emergency centres. You have to get these centres working,” the President said.
The team said the launch of car-free days in Nairobi and youth market days in 17 sub counties would be accomplished within three months.Chief of Staff Nzioka Waita will oversee the regeneration on the President’s behalf.