CONSTRUCTION BUSINESS REVIEW
SEPTEMBER 2016
11
OPINION & COMMENTS WHAT THEY SAID | OPINION MAKERS
TALKING POINT | PHILIP OCHIENG
Law courts must subject owners, builders of killer houses to harsh penalties “Mr Speaker, in order to improve the earnings of the farmers, I propose to remove these levies. The institutions that were hitherto funded from these levies will now be funded from the exchequer. In addition, Mr Speaker, I also intend to remove all other levies including levies charged by National Environmental Management Authority and National Construction Authority in order to reduce the cost of doing business” - Henry Rotich, Treasury Secretary
“We are happy to have these two levies [charged by the National Environmental Management Authority (Nema) and the National Construction Authority (NCA) on projects] removed because they were becoming too heavy in addition to the other taxes we already pay as the business community. It is good that they can now source funds from the exchequer where we remit a lot of tax already.” - Agatha Juma, KEPSA head of public private dialogue dept
Letters to the editor
“With the SGR we intend to handle 30 per cent of Mombasa port’s cargo in the first few years of operation, increasing this to 45-50 per cent thereafter. This will create a significant shift in the mode of transport, leading to a reduction in transport expenses, and thus the overall cost of doing business in Kenya. We have the opportunity to make Kenya and the region more competitive if we lower transport costs.” - Atanas maina, MD Kenya Railways
“We want to bring up Konza to be right, so we are working with other government agencies to finalise on key infrastructure such as power, broadband, access roads, rail services water and sewerage in time to march investor times lines. We are looking forward to working with the investors to realise the Silicon Savannah dream that will position Kenya as a global centre for innovation and Africa’s technology.” - John Tanui, CEO Konza Devt Authority
The editors welcomes readers comments on topical issues. Send your letters via email to editor@constructionkenya.com. Letters may be edited for space, clarity and legal considerations. Views expressed here are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher.
Kenya’s gigantic shopping malls in an uncomfortable zone
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or the past few years, developers have spent billions of shillings to put up show-stopping malls in Kenyan cities to meet the rising demand for international retail brands expanding into the country. This has left the capital Nairobi with 391,000 square metres of existing mall space with an additional 470,000 square metres in the pipeline, according to Knight Frank’s “2016 sub-Saharan Shopping Centre Development Trends”. While this can be described as a booming market, the shopping mall business itself is struggling to make money. Although the mall culture is gaining popularity among residents, many retailers are complaining that the footfalls (the number of ‘shoppers’) are not getting converted into business. Residents of Nairobi and other major cities and towns
The newly constructed ‘Uni-City’ at Kenyatta University in Nairobi. COURTESY where stunning malls have been erected throng the facilities on weekends - spending cash on bites at food courts - but are very reluctant to shop at the malls especially at expensive outlets. Poorly performing retailers are increasingly exiting malls midway through their lease contracts forcing land-
lords to find creative ways such as scrapping goodwill charges to woo tenants. These strategies are, however, short-lived and mall owners must come up with well-thought-out strategies to remain in business. One such strategy is the stratification of mall spaces to accommodate small and
medium-sized enterprises at lower grade level. The trick here lies in carefully segmenting a shopping mall’s targeted tenants and strategically attracting the right mix of customers. PETER MWANIKI The writer is a property developer
Scrapping of the levies to boost home construction For a long time, home builders and other groups have recommended the scrapping of levies charged by the National Environmental Management Authority (Nema) and National Construction Authority (NCA) as a way of lowering the cost of doing business in the country. These pleadings have remained largely unsuccessful and builders have continued
to part with huge money to have their projects approved by the two institutions. Nema has been collecting a 0.1 per cent levy on the cost of projects to certify their environmental fitness while the NCA has been asking for a 0.5 per cent levy on every housing development. But in his budget speech on June 8, Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich scrapped
the levies, saying that two institutions will now be funded from the exchequer. As a property developer, I must commend the minister for scrapping these levies. Most of us rely on expensive bank loans to finance our projects and it is painful to see a significant portion of your hard borrowed money going into the coffers of an institution that would other-
wise be funded by the State. The move is timely and will help to ensure developers can optimise their funds on actual construction work, thereby lowering their costs. This has the potential to solve the country’s housing chronic shortage that stands at about 150,000 units a year. - Jane Igadwah South C, Nairobi
I
n certain societies, death is not a sentence that a court of law will impose frivolously on any human being. This, presumably, is because, as an important aspect of their training, all their judicial officials are convinced that a human being’s life is too sacrosanct to be ended with one stroke of the mallet. My hope is that our training of all courtroom Daniels is to make them recognise that, from the consequence of one’s own folly, all convicts – bar none – can learn to reform their social conduct. If we allow one to live, a convict may learn to treat other human beings exactly as he or she would like them to treat him or her. Is that why Chief Justice Willy Mutunga’s courts will not casually give any convict the long rope from which to hang? But Mr Mutunga’s men and women should have another reason for not being too liberal with the noose. It is that the human genome is not cast in iron. Ever since Darwin, we know how wonderfully malleable the human gene is, especially during the first third of an individual’s life. Even after that, experience should teach all average humans to doff most of the genetic but potentially tragic childlikeness of all ages of an ape species, the behaviour that biologists call neoteny. In short, every time you hang a robber or murderer, you deny him or her all the opportunity to reform his or her attitude and conduct. But, of course, nothing social can ever be stated through such rigid black-and-white opposites. There are countless degrees of criminal bent and of ability to reform. But in any system which allows individuals to become filthy rich at the immense expense of the mass, it may become habitual for a human being to deliberately condemn to death hundreds of other human beings in order to make vast material gains from it. I don’t know that this was what caused the latest tragedy in Nairobi, in which a residential building caved in, killing tens of Kenyans. But the fact is that, in Kenya, it happens far more frequently than in any of the other countries in which I have lived in three continents (Africa, North America and Europe). In Kenya, we are so busy building a society where the individual’s greed for money will soon far outweigh all our mutual obligations. A time may come apace when – like the lions after the Thompson’s gazelles of our national parks – we shall begin to go after one another with total commitment to kill. If a person can put up a residential building anywhere in any town which, he or she knows, will soon collapse after the “developer” has collected from the tenants money enough to repay the costs of the building and remain with a fat profit, greed has begun to play complete havoc with whatever remains of our basic humanity. But even if canine avarice be what goads our so-called “developers”, a much more rational reckoning should convince them to raise buildings to last at least for as long as a “developer” lives for him to gain a lot more than he invested, and with a peaceful conscience. However, if you can enjoy the money when you know that it has come from the flesh of dead human children, then something has gone frighteningly wrong with your humanity. You have lost all of what William Shakespeare called “the milk of human kindness”. Those who gain from this rot into which they have condemned Kenya fail to see that such a system cannot last long. Their whole system may soon reach its elastic limit and, like Sodom and Gomorrah of the Book’s infamy, come tumbling down. To rescue Kenyans from this Gehenna, our law courts must begin to subject capital offenders to penalties designed to deter. This column first appeared in Sunday Nation. UPDATE: Dr Willy Mutunga retired from his post as Chief Justice of the Republic of Kenya on June 16, 2016.