Bus company collapses as County Hall deal botched
City Hall.
The bus company linked to a deal with Nairobi County Government that has gone sour has closed shop.
Diamond Coaches Ltd, formerly operating as Maslah Executive Ltd, has closed four of its branch offices in Nairobi’s River Road and Eastleigh areas, Mwembe Tayari in Mombasa and in Garissa town.
The company went under after a deal that would have seen it bought off by the County Government aborted.
According to documents, Mr Ondieki had engaged the owners of the buses in a deal where the County Government would pay off the company’s Sh39 million loan balance with First Community Bank in exchange for a 51 per cent stake.
However, the County Government failed to pay the money in three installments as proposed by Mr Ondieki even after the buses had been withdrawn from their routes in preparation for a launch by Governor Evans Kidero in February.
It was the unfulfilled promise that forced the financiers of the buses (First Community Bank) to confiscate eight buses and three lorries and offer them for sale through auctioning beginning last Friday.
On Tuesday, Managing Director Guleid Mursal confirmed: “We have collapsed. We have closed all our offices and our garage. The county Government is to blame for this.”
Mr Mursal, who has been running Maslah buses for six years said county officials duped the firm into the deal thus disrupting their loan repayment schedules.
“We were paying almost a million every month. We were doing well until the City Hall men came to us,” he said.