NAIROBI
A court on Friday set March 13 as the date for the hearing of two civil society activists who seek to stop a Chinese company from building a multi-billion-dollar railway line from the port of Mombasa to the Ugandan border.
Okiah Omtatah and Wycliffe Nyakina hope to halt construction of the planned 609-kilometer railway line, which will be built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation.
China's Exim Bank will offer Kenya a $1.6-billion commercial loan and a $1.63-billion concessional loan for the project.
"Construction of the railway requires that, when the government is doing procurement, it must do so in an open tendering process," Omtatah told Anadolu Agency.
"It must do so in a competitive way and it must ensure that whatever it purchases is cost-effective. We have argued in our case that this didn't happen," he said.
"The government single-sourced, and the price, when you compare it to the price of similar projects like in Ethiopia, our price is double – double the cost of the Ethiopian rail," he added.
Omtatah argued that the China Road and Bridges Corporation had been declared a "corrupt entity" by the World Bank, which had blacklisted it "until 2017 for engaging in corruption in the Philippines."
Nyakina, for his part, stressed the "impropriety" of the government tendering process.
"The tendering process did not observe fully the constitutional requirements, nor did it measure up to what the constitution of Kenya expects it to measure up to," he said.
When the activists announced their plans to file a lawsuit aimed at halting the railway's construction, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta reacted cautiously, saying: "We must shun arrogant attacks on the progress we wish to make."
"The Standard Gauge Railway project must and will go ahead for us to achieve our development agenda," he said. "So let me ask all those who have information on any aspects they feel are questionable to go to parliament and testify."
"Give evidence or come to me," Kenyatta added. "Tell me where the problem is."
According to Kenyan authorities, the railway is slated for completion in 2016 and will link the country's port city of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean with landlocked Uganda next door. There are also plans to eventually extend the railway line to landlocked Rwanda and South Sudan.
By James Shimanyula
englishnews@aa.com.tr
