Ol Kalou town used to be a reticent rural backwater, until it was chosen as the headquarters of Nyandarua County — a reluctant second choice after Nyahururu was successfully claimed by Laikipia County at the dawn of devolution amid much political wrangling.
Thrust too soon into the huge responsibility of an administrative capital, the town is now suffering from chronic infrastructural challenges among them a shortage of both commercial and residential housing.
A majority of its workers in the public and private sectors — businessmen, county assembly members, and senior public servants in both the national and county governments — do not live there and end up spending millions of shillings every year to commute from Nakuru, Nyahururu, Gilgil, Nanyuki and other towns.
Every morning, convoys of tens of government vehicles leave for these towns to collect workers.
A driver, Mr Patrick Tanui, says that most of the vehicles used by the government officials consume about Sh2,000 worth of fuel from Ol Kalou to Nakuru town, Sh1,500 to Nyahururu, Sh1,000 to Gilgil and Sh5,000 to Nairobi.
The daily trips to and from Nakuru costs each worker Sh80,000 in fuel for 20 working days a month, translating to Sh960,000 annually.
Officials now admit that the mass movement of staff to and from Ol Kalou every morning and in the evening is draining the county coffers and denying it investment opportunities, hurting the local economy and hindering the town’s organic growth.
“There is a big problem here; the government continues to post civil servants to the county amid a chronic shortage of housing. You earn your money in Nyandarua but spend it in other counties. It’s a challenge we all must think about because workers need to plough their salaries back into the local economy to boost the circulation of money,” says Nyandarua Central Deputy County Commissioner Gideon Oyagi.
“If we are not able to develop the physical infrastructure in terms of residential houses because of the land problem in this county, the local economy will not grow. It’s an issue we need to confront and the land in Ol Kalou must be freed for development.
“Sadly, all of us come here to work but in the evening we leave because there is nowhere to stay, when we should be eating , sleeping, and consuming electricity and other services in Ol Kalou,” says Mr Ndegwa.
The county government is now planning to issue free land to both public and private entities to build staff housing in a bid to address the problem.
One the beneficiaries of this scheme is the Judiciary, which has been allocated land to build houses for judges and magistrates.
“The county government has set aside 20 acres for the construction of 2,000 affordable housing units. Of these, 1,200 will be built in Ol Kalou, while the remaining 800 units will be built in Engineer town in Kinangop constituency,” Lands executive Lawrence Mukundi told the Nation in an interview.
Mr Mukundi says the development of the four-floored modern houses is a joint project of the county government and the National Housing Corporation.
A task force formed by the county leadership last year to address the issue of double allocation of plots in Ol Kalou has cleared 2,315 plots, paving way for their development.
“The clearance is expected to accelerate the preparation of the Nyandarua County Integrated Sustainable Development Plan for Ol Kalou Municipality, divided into six blocks,” said Mr Mukundi.
But the task force led by Mr Joseph Kuria is yet to resolve 858 cases of double allocations where the owners have valid documents.
To entice the cleared landowners to develop their plots, Governor Francis Kimemia has directed the county executive committee members for Lands and Urban Development to waive taxes for investors constructing multi-storey buildings.
