Central Regional Commissioner, Wilfred Nyagwanga has urged various government organisations implementing development projects to collaborate to ensure projects are implemented efficiently.
Nyagwanga said cooperation and partnership between government agencies holds the key to ensuring full implementation of government projects within stipulated timelines to allow citizens to benefit.
The regional boss said many of the projects have stalled or are blocked by process bottlenecks such as enforcement of statutory regulations, forcing projects to overshoot budgets to the detriment of taxpayers.
Speaking after a meeting with the National Government Regional Implementation Coordinating Committee, Nyagwanga said some of the major projects within the region run the risk of stalling if agencies concerned continue to work at cross purposes.
Citing examples, the RC said a road construction in Nyandarua had almost stalled after National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) stopped operations until the required environmental regulations are complied with.
He said the Sh 6.8 billion Northern Water Collector Tunnel project in Murang’a County was 90 percent complete, but had run into headwinds after some local residents whose land was affected moved to court to challenge the amount of money they were given as compensation.
Nyagwanga further said a similar scenario obtains in the Sh 24 billion Kariminu dam project in Kiambu where the contractor had been identified but work was yet to commence as a result of a compensation standoff.
He said there was need to unlock such challenges through dialogue and partnership between the concerned stakeholders to ensure projects run to completion smoothly to avoid wastage of taxpayers’ resources.
“We need to create synergy to ensure projects are completed on time,” said the RC, adding that a team had already been put in place to unlock the deadlocks.
By Samuel Waititu
