Eldoret Bypass Nears Completion

The delayed Eldoret Bypass could soon be completed after Treasury offered a payout to address challenges in the construction.

The project was started by President Uhuru Kenyatta on August 1, 2017 and was supposed to be completed by August of 2018, but the pay-out dispute slowed things down.

The Kenya National Highways Authority, which is in charge of the project, has set a new completion date of April 2021, but a spot check revealed that certain interchanges, such as Cheplaskei, are still unfinished.

The National Land Commission (NLC) revealed in July 2018 that it was having trouble resolving border and land issues between impacted property owners and the Uasin Gishu administration.

Following consultations with the impacted parties, the NLC reached an agreement on a course of action, allowing the contractor, China Wu Yi Company Limited, to begin the road works.

However, in January of this year, the project came to a halt once more due to a new compensation dispute.

Three years after signing a contract with the government, the affected landowners claim they were not been paid.

The landlords demanded a 30% interest rate on the late payments, or they would cancel the contracts they had signed with the Kenya National Highways Authority (KenHA) and the National Land Commission (NLC) for the acquisition of their land for the project.