The striking workers of Thwake multipurpose dam in Makueni will be replaced if they fail to resume work this week, county commissioner Mohammed Maalim has said.
The workers downed their tools on Thursday last week to protest what they termed as poor pay, bad working conditions and mistreatment.
They marched to the area MCA Jonathan Kimongo's office in Mavindini market to push their demands.
More than 900 workers have been contracted to work on the dam. Maalim said by the end of the project, the contractor will have hired 1,643 workers, 1,451 of them Kenyan.
The commissioner asked the workers to seek alternative ways of airing their grievances.
He spoke on Tuesday when the County Development Implementation Coordination Committee met the Chinese contractor and Thwake workers' union officials.
Maalim said the government will not allow any interruption of the project.
He instructed the contractor to listen to the workers' grievances and see which ones can be sorted in accordance with the law.
The commissioner also asked the contractor to dig two boreholes in Makueni and two in Kitui for residents who now can't access Thwake river.
"Thwake dam has been a success story so far. Since its inception, it has been up and running without any interruption and we will not allow anyone to stall it, " Maalim said.
He said the biggest huddle the government had to deal with was compensation and the matter is now coming to conclusion.
"As at now, out of the 1,792 persons affected by the dam, only 24 cases are remaining uncompensated. The 24 pending cases are out of issues of succession and disputes", he said.
Maalim said that the government had already spent Sh3.52 billion on compensation.
He asked chiefs to engage the elders to see how the uncompensated cases will be resolved.
