Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko. File Photo | NMG
Depending on who you ask, Nairobians will view the end of
Governor Mike Sonko’s first year in office as a mixture of highs and
lows.
For instance, many are still reeling from a city
centre matatu ban earlier this month that most residents saw as a
failure and disaster, but which some viewed positively owing to what
they say was a more-decluttered central business district.
As the man in charge of running Kenya's capital city, he scored hits and misses on some of the election pledges he made.
Here
is an assessment of how he fared on some of those promises as well as a
look at the highest and lowest moments at City Hall in 2018.
HIGHS
Parking fees slashed
City motorists in the capital are set to pay Sh200 for parking after the county assembly passed a Bill cut the fees from Sh300.
The
reduction comes almost a year after Sonko’s election promise to slash
the fees from Sh300 to Sh150 within his first 100 days in office.
In passing the regulations, county members noted despite that
despite the earlier hike to Sh300, this did not translate to higher
revenue collection from the parking department as expected.
Thus, Sonko partially fulfilled his pledge, though not as low as he had promised and not within the time period he had hoped.
Demolitions
In
a rare and bold move, a multi-agency team comprising City Hall and
national government officials have since July gone on to demolish
buildings worth billions of shillings for encroaching on rivers and
sitting on grabbed land.
Taj-Mall, Southend Mall along
Lang’ata Road, Ukay Mall in Westlands and Grand Manor hotel in Gigiri
are some of the city’s high-end buildings that went down this year.
This
is a shift from the past where the several buildings remained untouched
even as they stood on grabbed land or encroached on the capital’s
rivers.
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