‘There was no one to sack’ – Murkomen speaks on recent JKIA blackout
By Mary Ouko, December 14, 2023
Roads and Transports Cabinet Secretary (CS) Kipchumba Murkomen has set the record straight on the frequent blackouts witnessed at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) over the past three months.
Speaking during an interview with Spice FM on Thursday, December 14, 2023, the CS who was responding to questions from Kenyans acknowledged that the problems at the airport are systematic and have been long overdue.
He went on to state that this time there was no one to be sacked for the predicaments at the country’s main airport and stressed that the problems witnessed at JKIA were the results of poor investments over the years.
“There was no one to sack….as a result of what happened at the airport, my friends suggested to me that I need to get my mattress and in the evening I go sleep next to the generator and the next morning I leave. I saw somebody saying a generator is something you just pluck in and pluck out but the problems we see at the airport are systemic of poor investments that we didn’t put in place for many years. Our airports suffered immense neglect.
“When we came to office in 2013 under the Jubilee administration, there was a fire that burned part of the airport so a lot of concentration went to restoring the airport and a great job was done by Uhuru’s administration to bringing back an airport within a very short time,” the CS said.
At the same time, the CS delved into the system of governance at the airport saying the human resources at the airport contributed to the issues addressed. While faulting the management, the CS assured Kenyans that his docket was working round the clock to ensure that the airport addressed the issues by hiring experts.
“What I want to understand is that there is a problem when it comes to human resources. The first thing I did was to tell KAA to appoint a new board and ensure that nobody will be acting at critical position, the second thing we did was advertise the positions to get experts we are done with procurement and financing, and we are now interviewing next week engineering,” Murkomen added.