News Break
The Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) on 23rd June morning presented a comprehensive manifesto to Azimio Coalition gubernatorial candidate Polycarp Igathe at a meeting held in Kempinski Hotel.
The meeting with Igathe came two days after a similar meeting on 21st June with Igathe’s the Kenya Kwanza opponent for the same seat Senator Johnson Sakajja.
See also: Sakaja: I know how to fix Nairobi’s problems
The manifesto presented by the CEO of Carol Kariuki seeks to make Nairobi a livable city and emphasizes eight thematic areas where the private sector wants to see a change in how the capital city is governed including e-government compliance and enforcement, healthcare, competitiveness, and jobs creation as well as culture and social inclusion.
According to the KEPSA CEO, priority interventions include a working and sustainable urban mobility and transport system, an integrated urban land use plan, water, wastewater, and solid waste management, including robust security and disaster risk management agenda for the city. “The vision of the private sector economic manifesto is to make Nairobi a livable city, and which requires among other interventions, an integrated planning approach to the provision of public goods such as infrastructure and services based on economic competitiveness, environmentally sustainable growth, social and financial inclusion as well as resilience and safety,” She said.
The meeting was part of ongoing engagements between KEPSA and the Presidential and Gubernatorial candidates to incorporate private-sector economic agenda into their manifestos. KEPSA tasked Mr. Igathe to make Nairobi a competitive, green, inclusive, resilient, and safe city to live in, work, and do business, if he is elected on August 9, 2022.
In making the city great for business, work, and leisure, KEPSA recommended the next Nairobi County government to embrace technology and innovative solutions to usher in a world-class mobility and transport system with proper management of traffic and congestion in the city.
“It is quite sad that we don’t have a working public transport system while our neighbouring cities like Dar es Salaam, Kigali and Addis Ababa have built Bus Rapid Transit systems. We need to ensure a working BRT where all other matatus and buses feed into various locations to bring order into the city and make it attractive for investors and safe to do business in, walk and promote tourism within the city,” explained Ms. Kariuki.
For a water-scarce city, Kariuki urged the incoming county government to develop an integrated system to manage water supply and particularly have a plan to increase water sufficiency, harvesting, and recycling and adopt smart waste management systems for Nairobi saying that only 45 percent of the 2,400 tons of daily solid waste in the city was being recycled.
On security and Disaster Risk Management, the private sector called on the County Governor aspirant for Nairobi to establish and operationalize a County Disaster Operation Centre, fully equipped with Early Warning Systems, hazard mapping, a disaster monitoring database, and Standard Operating Procedures detailing the full continuum of procedures for handling Level 1 and Level 2 disasters.
The Private Sector Economic Manifesto was developed by KEPSA through a stakeholder engagement process cutting across all sectors of the economy. It draws out key priorities for national development and business sectoral priorities, which can only be achieved through partnership and collaboration with the government and other stakeholders.
