NSSF advertises for Tassia estate construction works

NSSF Acting Managing Trustee Hope Mwashumbe (L) accompanied by the fund's officials during the Parliamentary Investment Committee hearing at Parliament buildings on August 28, 2013. NSSF has advertised for construction works at the plots it once owned at Tassia. DIANA NGILA   NATION MEDIA GROUP

By Mugambi Mutegi

In Summary

• Residents of Tassia estate in Embakasi are set to benefit from better living conditions after the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) advertised for construction works at the plots it once owned.
• Residents of the estate, who spent million of shillings acquiring the houses from NSSF, have had to make do with impassable roads, flooding and clogged drainage systems that have over the years eroded Tassia’s allure.

Residents of Tassia estate in Embakasi are set to benefit from better living conditions after the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) advertised for construction works at the plots it sold in 2003.

NSSF has placed a tender for construction of roads, electrical installations and sewerage and plumbing works in what will bring an end to the suffering of residents in the estate.

Residents of the estate, who spent million of shillings acquiring the houses from NSSF, have had to make do with impassable roads, flooding and clogged drainage systems that have over the years eroded Tassia’s allure.

The tender comes four months after Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero directed the Fund to carry out the construction works in order to improve the living conditions of the estate.

“These homes were sold to people who had squatted on the land and distorted the plans of the estate,” says Hope Mwashumbe, the acting NSSF managing trustee.

“The cost of the works is included in the price the residents paid for the homes. We want to rid the place off the nightmare that is its infrastructure one and for all.”

The tender has been placed a few days after the Fund placed two other tenders for two controversial multi-billion shilling real estate projects that were linked to the sacking of the fund’s managing trustee in July.

NSSF has placed an international joint venture tender for the construction of a 62-storey tower on its land on Kenyatta Avenue, opposite Teleposta in Nairobi, at an estimated cost of Sh20 billion.

These three tender indicates a lift on a freeze on tendering placed on the Fund by Labour Cabinet Secretary Kazungu Kambi.

pmutegi@ke.nationmedia.com