The Kenya Roads Board (KRB) has released 25 percent of funds meant for road construction and maintenance to necessary roads agencies.
The funds include emergency cash that will be used to repair any infrastructure that will be damaged by the expected El Nino rains.
In this financial year, the government has set aside Sh244B to the Ministry of Roads and Transport towards road construction and management.
This came as the board announced that it would in a month release an inventory on the state of the roads in the country in the last five years.
According to the KRB Director-General (DG) Engineer Wilson Kosgei, various road agencies were on high alert as the rains started pounding parts of the country.
Kosgei said that they were working closely with different road agencies and county governments in case there were any destruction of road infrastructure by the rains.
“The government has already released 25 percent of funds to roads agencies and this includes emergency funds in case we have a disaster caused by the heavy rains,” he said.
Addressing the press during a workshop with six counties in Sawela Lodge in Naivasha, he said that they were working on a five year report on the status of the country’s roads.
He noted that with billions of shillings being pumped into construction and maintenance of roads in the last five years, the situation had improved greatly.
Kosgei said that that 80 percent of the roads were domiciled under county governments thus the need to work with the devolved units in uplifting their status.
“The last inventory on the status of our road was conducted in 2018 and we have conducted another this year with the results expected to be out in a month’s time,” he said.
On his part, the CEC for Roads and Transport in Nandi County Drice Rono said that counties were seeking more funds towards improving the conditions of rural roads.
He said that roads under the national government were around 80,000kms with the counties taking a lion share of over 161,000kms despite the low funding.
Rono said that the Council of Governors (COG) was currently engaging the national government so that budgetary allocation towards rural roads could be addressed.
“Low funding for rural roads has been a major challenge but we are engaging the national government so that the funding can be addressed,” he said.
