The government should engage the NYS or the military to work on one of the seven stalled stadiums then use it as a pilot project.
Nyeri Town MP Ngunjiri Wambugu yesterday said this is the only way the government can realise meaningful progress in the construction of the seven stadiums promised by the Jubilee government.
The MP said there are funds to build the stadiums and the National Sports and Culture has over Sh5 billion in collections supposed to build the stadiums.
“We have an extremely big cohort of National Youth Service (NYS) who have been trained. Why don’t we equip them? They can build a stadium and make it a pilot, then we can use that to replicate the other stadiums,” he said.
The legislator spoke to the media at Ruring’u Stadium in his constituency.
Nyeri people and Kenyans in general want to see the stadiums they were promised by the Jubilee government, he said.
The MP said Kenyans are running into the third year of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s second term but those he gave the commitment to have the stadiums done are making him look bad by failing to deliver, he added.
“The President has already delegated the work and availed the funds but somebody has decided that they will not have the work done.”
The lawmaker said he suspects the work has not been done despite money being there because no one is talking about it.
“We don’t take sports seriously. We discuss issues of security, health and education, but not sports,” he said.
“May be there are people within the Ministry of Sports who think that you can get away with not doing things as required as nobody will raise the issue.”
He said he has invited Sports CS Amina Mohamed to see that nothing has been going on at the stadium.
Wambugu said Amina should stop working with the contractors and engage the military or the NYS.
The legislator said they should start with Ruring’u, then use it as a case study for the other six.
Both Interior CS Fred Matiang’i and Deputy President William Ruto while on their visit to Nyeri promised to have the construction work resume, but this has not happened.
The stadium was commissioned in 2017 by Uhuru, but it has stalled.
"The President has made a decision on that matter that Ruringu Stadium must be completed," Matiang’i said.
