Thirsty Murang’a Residents Call For Urgent Solution To Water Wars Pitting Firm, Locals

By Kamau John

A sec­tion of Murang’a res­i­dents served by Murang’a South Water and San­i­ta­tion Com­pa­ny (MUSWASCO) have called for urgent inter­ven­tions to solve wran­gles pit­ting the firm and locals over ser­vices.

The water firm has been at wars with locals espe­cial­ly in Kiny­ona area of Kigu­mo sub-coun­ty where it sources water over increased tar­iffs. The wars recent­ly esca­lat­ed and locals van­dal­ized and destroyed water infra­struc­ture belong­ing to the com­pa­ny.

This has how­ev­er dealt a huge blow to res­i­dents in Murang’a South includ­ing Kigu­mo, Kan­dara and Maragua who are served by the water firm. Locals say taps have run dry in their homes and oth­er insti­tu­tions includ­ing schools and hos­pi­tals caus­ing a major cri­sis in the region.

The Coun­ty admin­is­tra­tion led by Gov­er­nor Irun­gu Kang’ata how­ev­er inter­vened and wrote to Water Ser­vices Reg­u­la­to­ry Board (WASREB) seek­ing to have the water rates low­ered from sh 107 to sh 88 per cubic meter in a bid to quell the duel.

Kang’ata has also writ­ten to the Prin­ci­pal Sec­re­tary for water request­ing urgent trans­fer of MUSWASCO shares to the coun­ty gov­ern­ment for bet­ter man­age­ment and run­ning of the Gov­ern­ment. Only MUSWASCO out of the five water ser­vice providers in Murang’a Coun­ty is run by the Nation­al Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er this has not sat well with res­i­dents with a sec­tion of them claim­ing that the wran­gles are polit­i­cal­ly insti­gat­ed with plans to take over and con­trol the water firm.

The locals led by Kamau Wait­hera and Andrew Thuo in a press­er claimed that water issues in Murang’a Coun­ty had pre­vi­ous­ly been addressed and solve in a pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion meet­ing held at Ken­nol town an year ago adding that some lead­ers with­in the coun­ty are now fuel­ing the wars to sat­is­fy their inter­ests.

Kamau said that some polit­i­cal quar­ters are after the rev­enue gen­er­at­ed by MUSWASCO and have now result­ed to wag­ing wars between the firm and inno­cent res­i­dents.

“We are per­turbed by the actions of some our lead­ers who are busy fuel­ing wran­gles instead of find­ing a last­ing solu­tion. We are privy to infor­ma­tion that they are behind the destruc­tion of the water infra­struc­ture belong­ing to MUSWASCO which was done at the detri­ment of thou­sands of res­i­dents who depend on it,” Kamau said.

They not­ed with con­cern that san­i­ta­tion in pub­lic schools and hos­pi­tals in the region is in jeop­ardy as water scarci­ty con­tin­ue to bite in the region which,  iron­i­cal­ly, sup­plies sev­er­al coun­ties under the Nairo­bi Met­ro­pol­i­tan area includ­ing Kiambu, Kaji­a­do, Nairo­bi and Machakos with clean water.

“We fear that there might be out­break of water borne dis­eases includ­ing cholera if this cri­sis is not solved. We are plead­ing with our lead­ers includ­ing the coun­ty admin­is­tra­tion to act swift­ly and sup­port the water firms in accel­er­at­ing ser­vice pro­vi­sion to locals,” Thuo said.

Res­i­dent Julius Mwau­ra appealed to Gov­er­nor Kang’ata to inter­vene and speed up deter­mi­na­tion of bound­aries and catch­ment areas between MUSWASCO and Murang’a Water and San­i­ta­tion Com­pa­ny (MUWASCO) to end con­flicts between the two firms and stream­line ser­vice deliv­ery.

He not­ed that Murang’a res­i­dents only require an all-time flow of clean water in their taps adding that oth­er dis­putes can be solved diplo­mat­i­cal­ly by the req­ui­site lead­ers.

“Bound­aries must be reviewed so that the peren­ni­al con­flicts that have been occur­ring between the two firms can be brought to an end. The buck stops with the Gov­er­nor who should expe­dite this process for the sake of reliev­ing res­i­dents the suf­fer­ing of going for days and even weeks with­out suf­fi­cient clean water for domes­tic use,” Mwau­ra said.

They also called on WASREB to first hold pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion meet­ings with res­i­dents before respond­ing to Gov­er­nor Kang’ata’s plea to have the water rates reviewed.