The extension of Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) from Nairobi to Naivasha – located to the west of the capital – is safe despite the emergence of fault lines and flooding along the Great Rift Valley, the Chinese firm undertaking the project said on Friday.
China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) however admitted that the ongoing rains have slowed down works on some parts prone to havoc-causing floods.
“We have constructed culverts after every 500 meters for drainage and since the rains started we have not recorded any flooding around the railway line,” Xinhua quotes Steve Zhao, the spokesperson for the Kenya SGR Head Office.
“The rains have, however, affected the speed which we would have liked to use but the project is on course and we are still within the set time lines,” he added.
Zhao’s remarks come on the back of reports by geologists that fault lines had emerged in the Great Rift Valley, causing the cracks that were reported last month.
President Uhuru Kenyatta commissioned the first phase of the SRG in May 2017, pledging to ensure its construction continued to Kisumu and beyond.
“It will be priority to see to it that it (the Standard Gauge Railway) ends not just in Naivasha but to Kisumu and into the hinterlands in Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC, to open up Africa’s potentiality,” he said.
The SGR is in line with China’s Belt and Road Forum, which is part of Beijing’s 2013 initiative to develop land and sea trade routes in Asia, Europe and parts of Africa to mimic the historical Silk Road covering about 60 countries.
