Nairobi News

Waning faith. It seemed that insecurity was the order of the day in Nairobi, said Alex Masinde. On Saturday he saw a man snatch a pedestrian’s handbag on Tom Mboya Street and ran away. No one bothered to give chase. A short distance away, he added, two men were fighting and one picked a stick and stabbed the other close to his ear. Like before, people stood aside and watched.

“But what chilled me the most was watching four men beating up a hopeless young man opposite the Highrise estate gate. His loud wails did little to get him the help he needed,” said Mr Masinde. He was sad that the state of county security had come to such lows and challenged county police commandant Benson Kibui to restore the waning faith in his officers’ ability to keep law and order.

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Long way to go. Monari Onyancha did not have kind words for county women leaders whom he felt were an under performing lot and a disappointment to their constituents. The problem with them, he said, was that they were not self-motivated to lead. He argued that few spent hours in a week researching devolution as underpinned in the Constitution or how women leaders in other countries were doing it? Mr Onyancha argued the problem was not the lack of creativity, as some people had argued, but that the women did not know a thing about their jobs.

“Creativity doesn’t just kick in. You have to be well versed. We have a long way to go to get our county moving. Knowledge is power. Use it, as they say,” he advised the women leaders.

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Priority. God forbid an epidemic should strike Nairobi, the health repercussions would be great, said Brenda Chemos alarmed by Governor Evans Kidero’s admission that the county had only 97 doctors, 25 dentists and 17 pharmacists. This was a mere drop in the ocean for a population of over three million people, she said. Ms Chemos added that the situation was unacceptable and correcting it should have been Dr Kidero’s first priority.

“It is all well and good that Kidero wants to ensure that in every sub-county there is a level four hospital, but who will attend to the patients in those hospitals?” she asked. Ms Chemos said she was not asking for the internationally recommended 1:1,000 ratio, but something closer.

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Play catch up. Urbanus Musyoka felt that President Uhuru Kenyatta wasted a lot of time when he recently presided over the launch of Kenya Airways’ first Boeng 787 Dreamliner. He said the launch was belated, especially after Ethiopian Airlines received its first Dreamliner in 2012, a testament to how fast the Kenyan neighbour was growing. Mr Musyoka said it was therefore no wonder that at a time when Ethiopia was building electric train tracks, the multi-billion standard gauge railway was entangled in corruption scandals.

“Nairobi is the economic and diplomatic hub of Eastern Africa. It should not have to play catch up with its neighbours,” he said adding that the apparent oversight also reflected lack of vision among city planners.

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