Road maintenance should be done on a “last come, first served” basis

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

01 December 2019

I do not wish to delude myself that my article last week prompted the government to start repairing roads. Project planning is a long process and so, the recently announced tenders for maintenance of various roads funded by the Fuel Levy must have started long before I wrote the article.

If you missed the story, the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) advertised for tenders to carry out maintenance works in the second and third quarter of the 2019/20 financial year at a cost of Sh13.5 billion.

The information that I used last week was taken from the Annual Public Roads Programme 2018/19 published by the Kenya Roads Board (KRB). In the document, KRB notes that the Road Maintenance Fuel Levy raised Sh64.996 billion in the last financial year.

The roads board also gives the breakdown of the amounts allocated to various agencies that are involved in roads maintenance. These are KeNHA (Sh23.6B), KURA (Sh5.8B), KeRRA (Sh12.4B), County governments (Sh8.3B) and Kenya Wildlife Services (Sh570 million).

I noticed a curious entry in the breakdown of road distances that each agency has earmarked for repairs. The Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA) is planning to work on 21,091km yet it manages 19,529km. There is no explanation of where the extra 1,562km come from.

KRB also notes that the Sh65B fuel levy is not enough to carry out all the needed repairs. This appears to go against the point I made last week that the funds are adequate. However, KRB explains that there was a long period of neglect before the maintenance levy was introduced.

Presumably, the agencies are working on a “first come, first served” basis; that is, starting with the roads that were first in the waiting list. Unfortunately, this is the wrong way to approach for repair works.

This is one of the few unique instances where “last come, first served” would be the more effective approach. The reason is that when repairs are carried out immediately at the first sign of damage, the cost is low and the repaired section lasts almost as long as a new road.

But when repairs are delayed, the road deteriorates very quickly and the cost of fixing it shoots up exponentially. So, if we start with the worst roads that have been waiting for a long time, they eat up all the money available.

As the agency waits for more funds, the road that had just few problems also deteriorate fast. By the time money becomes available, the road is in a terrible state and costs will have skyrocketed.

Eventually, we find ourselves in a situation where we are always fixing very badly worn out roads. It begins to appear as if the agencies are deliberately ignoring lightly damaged and always waiting until the repair cost is high enough to attract “decent” kickbacks.

This is not the case. It is a systemic problem created by the “first come, first served” strategy. Road maintenance should be done on a “last come, first served” basis.