County residents laud improved state of roads

By Steve Umidha

Residents of Zimmerman, Roysambu Constituency are a happy lot following the ongoing roads repair linking suburban estates to the main Thika road highway.

With the mending and tarmacking of such roads, classified as Class C and D under the jurisdiction of the Counties, residents such as Levance Oyoto, believes that such a move by the County Government of Nairobi would go a long way in improving access as well as movement of goods and people.

“We have suffered for many years, especially during rainy seasons. Previously we were forced to spend more on transportation when using motorbikes to ferry our goods from the main road to the estate because of flooding and poor state of roads,” says a happy Oyoto who has lived in the area for 7 years.

Previously area residents had been reduced to run-down and impassable pathways with the stretches of roads often short, some less than a kilometre long that had been characterized by dilapidation.

Indeed, Zimmerman as it is with other populous and emerging estates notoriously in Eastlands, have had these roads neglected for years by the previous regimes despite playing a linking key role for most residential estates and commercial hubs in the city, and using them had previously become a nuisance for motorists and pedestrians alike with huge traffic snarl-ups a common spectacle.

That common scenario in the densely populated area is fast becoming a thing of the past with the repair and expansion of the busy stretch opening up the sprawling Zimmerman-Mirema estates to Kahawa West, bypass linking to Ruiru to the Superhighway.

“It is good thing the County Government is doing, we would love to see the interior roads repaired as well, but this is impressive considering what we were going through the previous years,” commented Alice Njeri, a resident and a motorist who lives along Mirema Drive, another stretch also under repair and expansion.

Potholes that collect rain water and often thin layer of tarmac roads in the area were a common sight and whose existence made the roads almost impassable.

How the linking roads look today from BASE stage on Kamiti road. (Photo by Steve Umidha)

One of the roads, which cuts across Mirema estate from ‘Cooperative’ stage on your way to Kahawa West was a complete mess during rainy seasons with thick soggy filth, owing to poor drainage systems by housing developers in the area with some of the clutter caused by human negligence and ignorance in disposing waste.

At least 600 kilometres of roads in Nairobi City County were earmarked for rehabilitation and upgraded in the 2018/2019 financial budget by the National Treasury in a programme that is costing taxpayers a whooping over Sh1.2 billion – according to Government estimates in a partnership with County Government of Nairobi, Kenya Urban Roads Authority (Kura), and the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (Kerra).