{UAH} NAIROBI AIRPORT BUSIEST, MOST MORDERN MY FOOT !

Nairobi airport Busiest, most modern my foot!

PHOTO | BILLY MUTAI A view of JKIA after the fire on August 7, 2013. NATION MEDIA GROUP

Kenyans live in their own sickening minds and are so laidback, so comfortable with the non-maintained archaic facilities and do not ask why things are the way they are 50 years after uhuru

By all standards, I am a very conceited person, and ironically, I am modest enough — or rather I am not ashamed — to admit it. I insist that I am modest because I know my inadequacies, but the problem is that I live in a country with a conceited citizenry.

Had it not been for my diffidence, I would have used this space to remind you how I have raved and ranted about Kenya’s poor safety record, its disregard for safety procedures and perpetual low standards.

As I have written many times before, I am not a safety engineer, just a safety freak, and whenever there is fire-related disaster like the one that hit Jomo Kenyatta International Airport last week, I write that many more will happen because government entities only talk, and talk some more about implementing safety procedures and dealing with disasters.

I have commented several times on Kenya’s poor safety record and lack of disaster preparedness, and maintained that in Nairobi, you will burn to death because the authorities have never internalised the line that fire is a good servant but a bad master.

One can argue that last week’s airport fire did not result in any human casualties, but the fact that it crippled what is billed as the region’s hub or the country’s main port of entry is shameful enough for a nation that uses superlatives and the best adjectives to describe its antiquated and poorly-maintained facilities and installations.

The ‘biggest’, ‘the most secure’, ‘the best’, ‘the most ultra-modern’, ‘the safest’ are all phrases Kenyans incessantly use to describe the country’s museum pieces of facilities whose costs have been inflated by the politically correct apparatchiks.

One does not need to be a frequent international traveller to know that ‘the busiest, safest, most-ultra-modern international airport” in the wherever — whose fire-fighting capabilities cannot pass the most basic test — is just but a bus station dressed as an airport.

It is a simple case of setting low standards, a typical case of setting the bar at the ground level, and when officials who are drunk with power stagger past it, people go gaga about how good the country’s facilities are.

Some politically-correct contractor spends years on a site building what should pass as a bicycle park, but when the whole government officialdom troops there to open it, Kenyans go wild over “the most ultra-modern railway station blah blah blah…

A building is put up in the name of a hospital, and even though it lacks modern equipment, Kenyans have been conditioned to shout their heads off about it being best medical facility…

Local investigations reveal how low education standards at the public universities have sunk and instead of Kenyans demanding better, they continue to scream that Kenyan universities are the best in the region.

When the universities fail the test in international surveys, Kenyans hurl invectives at the West, their favourite scapegoat, and wail that it is a ploy to denigrate the country.

Never in the history of mankind has a nation been so full of itself, so conditioned to think itself so important and that others always want to bring it down yet it is already in a hole.

Obscurantist government officials flapdoodle on health care, communications, education, transport and all facilities in between, and the people — yeah, they are the most loyal, dedicated, patriotic, peaceful and extremely understanding taxpayers — genuflect as if they are under hypnosis as their money goes down the drain or is channelled into personal bank accounts.

When their hypnotic spell is broken, they think they are being done a favour and scream about the best, the largest, the most ultra-modern facilities the country has. When things fail to work, they are lulled into submission with little gestures and more promises. What they are never told is that they will pay more so that the facilities can be run down again.

Another thing they never get to know because they never ask, is which officials fail to do their bit or why the numerous promises are never kept.

Truth be told, Kenyans are delusional. They live in a bubble, in their own sickening minds and are so laidback, so comfortable with the non-maintained archaic facilities and do not ask why things are the way they are 50 years after independence.

Unless that bubble bursts, conceit coupled with euphoria will be the undoing of this country — and there will forever be that cycle of ignorance, collective idiocy and untold sufferance as the cost of living rises and living standards continue to plummet.

Where are the right men when you need them the most?

During the confusion at Kenya’s most modern bus station — also known as an international airport — there was, of course, the occasional backpatting by the media fraternity and sorority over a wonderful coverage.

Anyone who is anybody was interviewed and they were not short of words. However, the most sought after “personality” was Titus Naikuni, the boss of Kenya Airways, one of the airlines that uses the aerodrome.

For a moment there, I felt that the bosses of other airlines must have felt so insignificant.

Statements were issued from almost all ministries — from Tourism to Internal Security, Transport... and I suspect even Mining, Lands, Devolution, Treasury, Health and Education jostled to put in a word.

However, the two people whose voices were never heard — probably because they were clueless — were the airport manager and the MD of Kenya Airports Authority. Well, even the head of Kenya Civil Aviation Authority, which “owns” the airspace, did not speak, but I doubt if he needed to.

Do you even know the names of those two gentlemen?

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Why pay a team to state the obvious?

As is always the case, a task force has been formed to investigate what happened. Really? A fire happened. And because there is no proper fire fighting equipment, it took time to be brought under control and the airport was closed down and there were chaos because there was no proper communication…

Isn’t there some safety authority already in place under the Transport ministry that should be doing such kind of tasks? Isn’t the fire brigade the body which is supposed to have qualified fire and safety engineers and is the one mandated with investigating the causes of fires?

If another fire breaks out at any other airports, will another task force be formed?

 

           Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni and Dr. Kiiza Besigye Uganda is in anarchy"
           Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
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