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Save common citizen from costly fuel pain
Motorists queue for fuel at Total fuel station in Kapenguria, West Pokot county on April 5, 2022.
There is a cruelty to the way economic pain moves in this country. It never touches the ones who designed it. It doesn’t inconvenience the man who signed the gazette notice or the one who stood at a podium to explain why it all had to be this way. It lands quietly and without ceremony at the bus stop.
On Wednesday morning, Kenyans woke up to petrol at Sh206.97 a litre in Nairobi and diesel at Sh206.84—Sh28.69 and Sh40.30, respectively, added overnight. The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) called it a review. The rest of us call it what it is: another month of choosing which bill doesn’t get paid.
By the time most people were still reading about the hike on their phones, the matatu operators were already done calculating. The Kenya Transporters Association announced a 13 to 14 per cent rise in operating costs and told its members to adjust fares immediately. Some doubled them.
The people absorbing this are not people with options. The mama mboga in Kayole still has to get to Gikomba. The student from Umoja still has to sit that exam. The nurse from Embakasi still has to make the morning shift. Their salaries did not go up. The price of unga will not stay where it was.
Mass transit system
Even the electric motorbike operators, who were supposed to be our way out of exactly this kind of crisis, have raised their rates. That tells you something about how shallow the alternative still is. Promising technology. Inadequate ecosystem.
We have had decades to build a working mass transit system. Decades to invest in energy alternatives. What do we have instead? A commuter rail that is always almost ready. A Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plan that has been sitting in folders since the Kibaki years. Promises at every election.
The government should immediately cap matatu fare increases. The operators have a right to survive, but the passenger cannot keep being the economy’s shock absorber. The government-to-government fuel deal must be opened to full scrutiny. Every shilling must be accounted for publicly.
And the BRT? Build it. Nairobi needs it the way a sick man needs medicine, not a brochure about medicine.
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David Ng’iela, Nairobi
