The construction of 60 houses at Kakamega Prison will begin in the next 14 days.
The prison is one of the correctional facilities earmarked for a major government housing project for police and prisons going on across the country. The Kakamega houses will cost Sh118 million and will be put up over a span of six months.
Raphael Ooko, deputy director of housing at the State Department of Housing and Urban Development, handed the project site to the contractor on Wednesday. He said the government plans to move security officers and their families from their deplorable houses to decent ones to motivate them.
The national police and prison services’ housing programme began two years ago. Some 1,050 housing units have been completed, 800 are still under construction, while construction of 744 new ones was launched this week.
Acute shortage
Ooko said they will hand over 12 sites in Bondo, Narok, Kakamega and Kapenguria in the Western region and several others in Central and Eastern.
“The project will move faster because we intend to employ Industrial Building Systems, which include the Expanded Polystyrene System, hollow interlocking concrete blocks, waffles and pre-cast concrete. This technology is faster and cheaper,” Ooko said.
Kakamega Prison has more than 600 officers who live in mud-walled and mabati single rooms together with their families. The contractor will build 48 self-contained bedsitters and 12 two-bedroom units.
Kakamega regional commander Nicholas Emase said he is excited about the project as there is an acute shortage of houses.
“...this institution hosts three offices, including the regional office, institution for women and the male institution and so these [houses] will ease the acute housing shortage.”
