Post by Mapambano Kenya on Jan 27, 2006 22:42:58 GMT 3
site: www.kenyasocialist.org
mail: mapambanokenya@gawab.com
January 25th 2006
KESDEMO'S STATEMENT ON THE COLLAPSE OF A BUILDING IN NAIROBI
The Kenya Scandinavia Democratic Movement (KESDEMO) sends deep condolences to families of more than 10 Kenyans who lost their lives after a sub-standard building which was under construction in Nairobi collapsed on Monday January 23rd 2005. Likewise, KESDEMO sends a message of "quick recovery" to more than 200 Kenyans who suffered various degrees of injuries and who have been admitted at various health institutions in Nairobi. The Movement shares the sadness and deep sorrow of all families whose loved ones are still trapped in the rubble because of the open and scandalous inability of the government to rescue them.
The collapse of the six story building could have been avoided if government departments in charge of the construction industry in Nairobi had done their work. The building was not just being constructed with sub-standard materials but its collapse had also been predicted a week earlier by honest engineers whose advise was ignored because the building's plan had been approved at the highest level and, most likely, after money changed hands.
According to press reports which emerged after the collapse of the structure, the building was constructed to fifth floor in record time of four months. Combined with substandard material that was being used to reduce construction costs at the expense of human safety, the eventual collapse of the building appeared to have been a disaster waiting to happen.
The Kibaki government must take full responsibility for having allowed sub-standard, corrupt and incompetent contractors to put up a building of that magnitude in the middle of a city of over 3 million people. Workers at the site had no protective clothes including helmets, gloves, shoes, uniforms etc. The poorly equipped rescue teams had a difficult time identifying workers and passers by who fell victim to the collapsed building and as we write, nobody knows the exact number of workers who have perished, been injured or still buried in the rubble.
Part of the building had already been leased before its completion. This means that the driving force behind the quick and shoddy construction was the "get rich quickly" (Mount Kenya Maffia ideology) based on greed, profit, exploitation and deception. The lives lost and the pain being suffered by both the injured and their families is linked to the extortionist capitalist ideology shared by both members of the ruling class in Kibaki's Maffia regime and their capitalist allies across the country.
The injured dumped at ill equipped Kenyatta National hospital
The class distinction in Kenya and the slave mentality towards Kenyan workers by the ruling class since independence was further exposed in the situation when the injured and dying workers together with other victims were rushed to a long standing "death chamber" called Kenyatta National Hospital popularly known for its neglect and poor handling of patients.
At the hospital, patients either sleep on the floor or share beds, there is lack of medicine and the little available drugs which have been sold by corrupt and well connected drug companies are expired. Kenyatta is well known for the starving of patients
because food suppliers are well connected economic criminals and well connected families which have been using this old and corrupt system to enrich themselves and their clans instead of supplying food to the hospital.
The truth is that the so called "National hospital" which is supposedly the biggest in East and Central Africa either lacks modern equipment or has much of its machinery broken down. Further, Doctors, Nurses, Clinical officers and other para-medical staff have fled the country due to slave wages, wanton neglect, lack of houses, bad working conditions, lack of equipment and numerous other maladies. Medics who have not fled the country to look for greener pastures in South Africa, Europe, Canada, USA etc have opened private clinics across the country where equipment and little drugs stolen from government agencies eventually wind up.
The critically injured and poor and neglected workers could not be taken to private Hospitals like Nairobi hospital, Aga Khan Hospital, MP Shah, Matter Misericodiae and others because these hospitals are purposely reserved for foreigners and the wealthy thieves who have and continue to loot the Kenyan economy. It is now known that the government hit men who
sodomized the wife of writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o after he returned from exile have been living in luxury at the exclusive Nairobi Hospital when critically injured workers and wananchi were rushed to perish at Kenyatta. It is for this reason that KESDEMO is campaigning for the abolition of private hospitals in Kenya.
Moody Awori’s crocodile tears and Kibaki’s cheap PR exercise
One of the most prominent thief and well known economic criminal in the Kibaki regime, Vice President Moody Awori, Health Minister Charity Ngilu and other political prostitutes in the Mafia regime all rushed to gaze at the tragedy. It is the view of KESDEMO that these “Very Irresponsible Perverts (VIPs)” rushed to the site to shed crocodile tears in order to portray the impression that through their presence at the scene of death, the government was "doing something" about the tragedy. KESDEMO also believes that even the President's decision to cut short his meeting in Sudan after the Nairobi tragedy was cosmetic and that the visit the President paid to “console” the injured in hospital was a routine Public Relation’s exercise in the face of a tragedy that was created by the government but which could have been prevented.
Since fake independence in 1963, the ruling class in Kenya has been well known for policies that are anti Kenyan people, deception and flattery especially during times of tragedy brought about by the crisis of the capitalist system which Kenya inherited from British colonialists. The amateurish and late rescue efforts after the tragedy was a direct consequence of an old fashioned system that has and will continue to fail. Rescue workers obviously did “everything within their means” to save lives but they were constantly frustrated by lack of effective equipment, a weakness that showed that the government had not learned from past tragedies.
Failure to have learned from the 1998 bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi, the Kikambala bombings of the Israeli owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, the attempted shooting of an Israeli Airline, the sinking of the Likoni ferry that was transporting poor Kenyans across the Indian ocean and the bombing of the Nofolk Hotel in November 1979 further proves the weakness and lack of preparedness of rescue teams in the Kenya’s Armed Forces, National Police, National Security Intelligence Services (NSIS), Fire brigade, Ambulance brigade, and other institutions.
Compared to the World Trade Center bombings or the 1998 US Embassy bombings where more than 250 Kenyans lost their lives, the collapse of just one single building in Nairobi forced the whole of the Kenyan government to call for International help because just like the famine and mass starvation facing the country, the Kibaki government could not deal with the crisis.
Corrupt Army generals were unable to mobilize for rescue operations
KESDEMO would like to remind Kenyans that Kenya has an Engineering battalion and other mechanized divisions with bulldozers and heavy cranes for lifting crashed military aircrafts while the country has Air Force fire brigades stationed at military bases and national airports. The reason why Israelis had to fly from Tel Aviv to Nairobi (many thousands of kilometers away) and why American marines had to travel from Djibouti to come and rescue Kenyans is because of corruption and failure within Kenya's Armed Forces, NSIS, National Police, and other government institutions.
It was a big national shame to note that even sniffer dogs had to be imported from abroad. While Israeli soldiers could be seen walking around in military uniforms trying to rescue victims and ordinary Kenyans in the streets used their bare hands to try and pull victims from the rubble, Kenyan soldiers continued to remain idle in the barracks due to lack of mobilization by their equally idle and corrupt Generals.
Since independence under Kenya's first president Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, the Kenya Armed Forces, which comprises of Kenya Army, Kenya Navy and Kenya Air Force are led by corrupt, hand picked and incompetent generals who must be appointed from the President's tribe. During Kibaki's tenure, the Army has proved to be one of the most corrupt State institutions in Kenya.
The buying of an old merchant ship from Spain and its conversion into a bogus battle ship ready to be handed to our Navy, the sending of military helicopters to South Africa (many kilometers away) for repairs where these corrupt Generals are making a huge amount of money, the recruitment of military conscripts through a process replete with nepotism, tribalism, clanism and favouritism are just but few examples of major areas of corruption and incompetence within the military.
Although Kenya has a Navy whose job is supposed to protect Kenya's territorial waters, speed boats belonging to local and International drug war lords are entering Kenya with billions worth of drugs for local and International consumption under the noses of the so called Kenya Navy (Marines). Kibaki's Maffia government has become an extension of Moi’s money laundering cartels by drug war lords, foreign and local economic criminals, tax evaders and tax cheaters sabotaging the Kenyan economy.
All tenders of military supplies like food are coming direct from the farms of Generals who are some of the biggest land grabbers in Kenya. The latest incompetence in the Army was demonstrated in the failure of Kenya's military commandoes to rescue the hijacked Merchant ship which was hired by World Food Program by gangs operating in Stateless Somalia, a country without a national army. Further, money disbursed for building Houses for soldiers is routinely converted by corrupt Generals to buy cheap tents as the balance is looted. Army buildings that exists are, in reality hovels that were built by British colonialists and which have no electricity, running water and other basic amenities.
When pastoralists and their livestock in North Eastern and other arid and semi arid areas are dying of hunger and lack of water these corrupt Generals are using the Armed Forces engineering battalion to drill bore holes to be used for irrigating their farms. This practice has been continuing since the installation of the first African Major General Ndolo, continued during the reign of General Jacksson L. Mulinge while it continues to this day. Of late, the same military engineering battalion was used to drill bore holes in the farms of the most corrupt former Minister for Defence and National Security Dr. Chris Ndarathi Murungaru in Kieni constituency. The rot within the system is limitless.
During Kenyatta dictatorship, some of these Generals and Police Commissioners were linked to bank robberies which were all inside jobs. They are all protected by the corrupt State. The issue is that with this kind of dirty background riddled with corruption and lack of patriotism, the failure of the same Army to help rescue victims in a collapsed building is very much possible. It is these same Generals who organized both the Wagalla massacre on February 10th 1984, the Kibish massacres in North Eastern province on November 1st 1989 during the annexation of the Elemi Triangle by former murderer Dictator
Daniel arap Moi and the Turbi massacre last year.
The military budget is bigger than the budget of the Ministry of Health and Roads combined because of the failure of Parliament and government policy of strategic looting by the ruling class. No Minister dares to question corruption and other irregular financial transactions within the internal workings of the military. The huge military budget is a major inspiration that encourages the President to appoint his henchmen in top military positions in the Republic of Kenya.
The decayed capitalist system will yield new but preventable disasters in future
There are many lessons to be learned from the collapse of the Nairobi building. Unless the issue of a change of the system by Kenyan workers and the oppressed is taken up, preventable tragedies such as the latest Nairobi incident will continue to happen. The failure of rescue operations in such a tiny tragedy reflects not just the failure of the Kibaki dictatorship but also the failure of the decayed capitalist system of government also responsible for the suffering of millions of Kenyans across the country.
The failure of the government to deal with the Nairobi tragedy must be seen vis-a vis the failure of the government to deal with the massive famine and starvation threatening the lives of 2.5 million Kenyans. The situation will not change if the crisis facing the capitalist system is not addressed and if the replacement of this exploitative system with a democratic Socialist system of government does not come on the agenda.
New buildings will continue collapsing and many lives will continue to be lost. A government surrounding itself with former colonial home guards, opportunists, reactionaries, apologists, bootlickers, traitors, economic criminals, drug dealers, tax-evaders and other anti-Kenyan forces will not liberate Kenya. KESDEMO believes that the only solution to our national woes is a Socialist revolution to topple the corrupt capitalist ruling class.
Martin Ngatia ngatia_martin@hotmail.com
Okoth Osewe: osewe@hotmail.com
KESDEMO Central Committee
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
KENYA SCANDINAVIA DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT (KESDEMO)
Kenya People's Democratic Movement (KEPEDEMO-Mapinduzi), Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance (KSDA), Kenya Social Forum in Norway (KSF - Norway), Muungano Ya Akina Mama Scandinavia, Organization of Kenyans in Denmark (OKD) and Association of Kenyan Students in Finland (AKSIF). ALLIES supporting statement: Kenya Socialist Community in London and Kenya Democracy Project (KDP) – Scandinavia. Statement also available at: www.kenyasocialist.org
Published by Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance (KSDA)
email: harakatips@hotmail.com
Home
mail: mapambanokenya@gawab.com
January 25th 2006
KESDEMO'S STATEMENT ON THE COLLAPSE OF A BUILDING IN NAIROBI
The Kenya Scandinavia Democratic Movement (KESDEMO) sends deep condolences to families of more than 10 Kenyans who lost their lives after a sub-standard building which was under construction in Nairobi collapsed on Monday January 23rd 2005. Likewise, KESDEMO sends a message of "quick recovery" to more than 200 Kenyans who suffered various degrees of injuries and who have been admitted at various health institutions in Nairobi. The Movement shares the sadness and deep sorrow of all families whose loved ones are still trapped in the rubble because of the open and scandalous inability of the government to rescue them.
The collapse of the six story building could have been avoided if government departments in charge of the construction industry in Nairobi had done their work. The building was not just being constructed with sub-standard materials but its collapse had also been predicted a week earlier by honest engineers whose advise was ignored because the building's plan had been approved at the highest level and, most likely, after money changed hands.
According to press reports which emerged after the collapse of the structure, the building was constructed to fifth floor in record time of four months. Combined with substandard material that was being used to reduce construction costs at the expense of human safety, the eventual collapse of the building appeared to have been a disaster waiting to happen.
The Kibaki government must take full responsibility for having allowed sub-standard, corrupt and incompetent contractors to put up a building of that magnitude in the middle of a city of over 3 million people. Workers at the site had no protective clothes including helmets, gloves, shoes, uniforms etc. The poorly equipped rescue teams had a difficult time identifying workers and passers by who fell victim to the collapsed building and as we write, nobody knows the exact number of workers who have perished, been injured or still buried in the rubble.
Part of the building had already been leased before its completion. This means that the driving force behind the quick and shoddy construction was the "get rich quickly" (Mount Kenya Maffia ideology) based on greed, profit, exploitation and deception. The lives lost and the pain being suffered by both the injured and their families is linked to the extortionist capitalist ideology shared by both members of the ruling class in Kibaki's Maffia regime and their capitalist allies across the country.
The injured dumped at ill equipped Kenyatta National hospital
The class distinction in Kenya and the slave mentality towards Kenyan workers by the ruling class since independence was further exposed in the situation when the injured and dying workers together with other victims were rushed to a long standing "death chamber" called Kenyatta National Hospital popularly known for its neglect and poor handling of patients.
At the hospital, patients either sleep on the floor or share beds, there is lack of medicine and the little available drugs which have been sold by corrupt and well connected drug companies are expired. Kenyatta is well known for the starving of patients
because food suppliers are well connected economic criminals and well connected families which have been using this old and corrupt system to enrich themselves and their clans instead of supplying food to the hospital.
The truth is that the so called "National hospital" which is supposedly the biggest in East and Central Africa either lacks modern equipment or has much of its machinery broken down. Further, Doctors, Nurses, Clinical officers and other para-medical staff have fled the country due to slave wages, wanton neglect, lack of houses, bad working conditions, lack of equipment and numerous other maladies. Medics who have not fled the country to look for greener pastures in South Africa, Europe, Canada, USA etc have opened private clinics across the country where equipment and little drugs stolen from government agencies eventually wind up.
The critically injured and poor and neglected workers could not be taken to private Hospitals like Nairobi hospital, Aga Khan Hospital, MP Shah, Matter Misericodiae and others because these hospitals are purposely reserved for foreigners and the wealthy thieves who have and continue to loot the Kenyan economy. It is now known that the government hit men who
sodomized the wife of writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o after he returned from exile have been living in luxury at the exclusive Nairobi Hospital when critically injured workers and wananchi were rushed to perish at Kenyatta. It is for this reason that KESDEMO is campaigning for the abolition of private hospitals in Kenya.
Moody Awori’s crocodile tears and Kibaki’s cheap PR exercise
One of the most prominent thief and well known economic criminal in the Kibaki regime, Vice President Moody Awori, Health Minister Charity Ngilu and other political prostitutes in the Mafia regime all rushed to gaze at the tragedy. It is the view of KESDEMO that these “Very Irresponsible Perverts (VIPs)” rushed to the site to shed crocodile tears in order to portray the impression that through their presence at the scene of death, the government was "doing something" about the tragedy. KESDEMO also believes that even the President's decision to cut short his meeting in Sudan after the Nairobi tragedy was cosmetic and that the visit the President paid to “console” the injured in hospital was a routine Public Relation’s exercise in the face of a tragedy that was created by the government but which could have been prevented.
Since fake independence in 1963, the ruling class in Kenya has been well known for policies that are anti Kenyan people, deception and flattery especially during times of tragedy brought about by the crisis of the capitalist system which Kenya inherited from British colonialists. The amateurish and late rescue efforts after the tragedy was a direct consequence of an old fashioned system that has and will continue to fail. Rescue workers obviously did “everything within their means” to save lives but they were constantly frustrated by lack of effective equipment, a weakness that showed that the government had not learned from past tragedies.
Failure to have learned from the 1998 bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi, the Kikambala bombings of the Israeli owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, the attempted shooting of an Israeli Airline, the sinking of the Likoni ferry that was transporting poor Kenyans across the Indian ocean and the bombing of the Nofolk Hotel in November 1979 further proves the weakness and lack of preparedness of rescue teams in the Kenya’s Armed Forces, National Police, National Security Intelligence Services (NSIS), Fire brigade, Ambulance brigade, and other institutions.
Compared to the World Trade Center bombings or the 1998 US Embassy bombings where more than 250 Kenyans lost their lives, the collapse of just one single building in Nairobi forced the whole of the Kenyan government to call for International help because just like the famine and mass starvation facing the country, the Kibaki government could not deal with the crisis.
Corrupt Army generals were unable to mobilize for rescue operations
KESDEMO would like to remind Kenyans that Kenya has an Engineering battalion and other mechanized divisions with bulldozers and heavy cranes for lifting crashed military aircrafts while the country has Air Force fire brigades stationed at military bases and national airports. The reason why Israelis had to fly from Tel Aviv to Nairobi (many thousands of kilometers away) and why American marines had to travel from Djibouti to come and rescue Kenyans is because of corruption and failure within Kenya's Armed Forces, NSIS, National Police, and other government institutions.
It was a big national shame to note that even sniffer dogs had to be imported from abroad. While Israeli soldiers could be seen walking around in military uniforms trying to rescue victims and ordinary Kenyans in the streets used their bare hands to try and pull victims from the rubble, Kenyan soldiers continued to remain idle in the barracks due to lack of mobilization by their equally idle and corrupt Generals.
Since independence under Kenya's first president Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, the Kenya Armed Forces, which comprises of Kenya Army, Kenya Navy and Kenya Air Force are led by corrupt, hand picked and incompetent generals who must be appointed from the President's tribe. During Kibaki's tenure, the Army has proved to be one of the most corrupt State institutions in Kenya.
The buying of an old merchant ship from Spain and its conversion into a bogus battle ship ready to be handed to our Navy, the sending of military helicopters to South Africa (many kilometers away) for repairs where these corrupt Generals are making a huge amount of money, the recruitment of military conscripts through a process replete with nepotism, tribalism, clanism and favouritism are just but few examples of major areas of corruption and incompetence within the military.
Although Kenya has a Navy whose job is supposed to protect Kenya's territorial waters, speed boats belonging to local and International drug war lords are entering Kenya with billions worth of drugs for local and International consumption under the noses of the so called Kenya Navy (Marines). Kibaki's Maffia government has become an extension of Moi’s money laundering cartels by drug war lords, foreign and local economic criminals, tax evaders and tax cheaters sabotaging the Kenyan economy.
All tenders of military supplies like food are coming direct from the farms of Generals who are some of the biggest land grabbers in Kenya. The latest incompetence in the Army was demonstrated in the failure of Kenya's military commandoes to rescue the hijacked Merchant ship which was hired by World Food Program by gangs operating in Stateless Somalia, a country without a national army. Further, money disbursed for building Houses for soldiers is routinely converted by corrupt Generals to buy cheap tents as the balance is looted. Army buildings that exists are, in reality hovels that were built by British colonialists and which have no electricity, running water and other basic amenities.
When pastoralists and their livestock in North Eastern and other arid and semi arid areas are dying of hunger and lack of water these corrupt Generals are using the Armed Forces engineering battalion to drill bore holes to be used for irrigating their farms. This practice has been continuing since the installation of the first African Major General Ndolo, continued during the reign of General Jacksson L. Mulinge while it continues to this day. Of late, the same military engineering battalion was used to drill bore holes in the farms of the most corrupt former Minister for Defence and National Security Dr. Chris Ndarathi Murungaru in Kieni constituency. The rot within the system is limitless.
During Kenyatta dictatorship, some of these Generals and Police Commissioners were linked to bank robberies which were all inside jobs. They are all protected by the corrupt State. The issue is that with this kind of dirty background riddled with corruption and lack of patriotism, the failure of the same Army to help rescue victims in a collapsed building is very much possible. It is these same Generals who organized both the Wagalla massacre on February 10th 1984, the Kibish massacres in North Eastern province on November 1st 1989 during the annexation of the Elemi Triangle by former murderer Dictator
Daniel arap Moi and the Turbi massacre last year.
The military budget is bigger than the budget of the Ministry of Health and Roads combined because of the failure of Parliament and government policy of strategic looting by the ruling class. No Minister dares to question corruption and other irregular financial transactions within the internal workings of the military. The huge military budget is a major inspiration that encourages the President to appoint his henchmen in top military positions in the Republic of Kenya.
The decayed capitalist system will yield new but preventable disasters in future
There are many lessons to be learned from the collapse of the Nairobi building. Unless the issue of a change of the system by Kenyan workers and the oppressed is taken up, preventable tragedies such as the latest Nairobi incident will continue to happen. The failure of rescue operations in such a tiny tragedy reflects not just the failure of the Kibaki dictatorship but also the failure of the decayed capitalist system of government also responsible for the suffering of millions of Kenyans across the country.
The failure of the government to deal with the Nairobi tragedy must be seen vis-a vis the failure of the government to deal with the massive famine and starvation threatening the lives of 2.5 million Kenyans. The situation will not change if the crisis facing the capitalist system is not addressed and if the replacement of this exploitative system with a democratic Socialist system of government does not come on the agenda.
New buildings will continue collapsing and many lives will continue to be lost. A government surrounding itself with former colonial home guards, opportunists, reactionaries, apologists, bootlickers, traitors, economic criminals, drug dealers, tax-evaders and other anti-Kenyan forces will not liberate Kenya. KESDEMO believes that the only solution to our national woes is a Socialist revolution to topple the corrupt capitalist ruling class.
Martin Ngatia ngatia_martin@hotmail.com
Okoth Osewe: osewe@hotmail.com
KESDEMO Central Committee
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
KENYA SCANDINAVIA DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT (KESDEMO)
Kenya People's Democratic Movement (KEPEDEMO-Mapinduzi), Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance (KSDA), Kenya Social Forum in Norway (KSF - Norway), Muungano Ya Akina Mama Scandinavia, Organization of Kenyans in Denmark (OKD) and Association of Kenyan Students in Finland (AKSIF). ALLIES supporting statement: Kenya Socialist Community in London and Kenya Democracy Project (KDP) – Scandinavia. Statement also available at: www.kenyasocialist.org
Published by Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance (KSDA)
email: harakatips@hotmail.com
Home