Mariam and her daughter Amanda, who died after their car plunged into the Likoni channel from a moving ferry, did not have to die. Theirs was a needless, avoidable death. Ignorance, laxity, negligence and human errors were the reasons behind their deaths.
They are victims of poor public service management, underfunded parastatals and unconcerned authorities who care less about the safety of wananchi. Mariam and Amanda disappeared from this world as hundreds watched. Their deaths have exposed the rot that is the Kenya Ferry death trap.
Days later, the bodies lie undersea not having been recovered. Kenya Ferry Services (KFS) claimed they do not have the necessary equipment to recover the bodies and were reliant on the Kenya Navy and Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) to offer the necessary support.
It is shocking in this time and era to have a parastatal operating in an area without the requisite equipment to do its work. KFS is fully aware of the depth of the channel, yet they remain aloof and not in possession of equipment to do the job. They are like farmers who have gone to the farm without their jembes.
Every day, around 300,000 Kenyans and 6,000 vehicles use the ferry services. The Likoni channel is one of the busiest in Africa and the world. It links Mombasa Island with Likoni, which is the most densely populated area in the South Coast of Kenya.
Majority of the ferry users are people who live in Likoni and have to come to the island every day for work, school or business. However, there are also those who use the channel for tourism purposes and to travel to the South Coast to their homes, farms and others onwards to Tanzania.
The truth of the matter is that the ferries are in the worst possible state. Some of the ferries are as old as 30 years. From afar, one can clearly see the rust all over the mainframes of the ferries. The doors and ramps, which are used for boarding, have broken down. They have gaps and remain a danger to motorists and passengers.
They also cannot move upward after loading to act as a barrier should the vehicles move backwards. It is this scenario that befell Mariam and Amanda. Their car moved backwards and straight into the ocean. Had the doors and ramps been working and up, the car would not have slid into the ocean.
The worst part is that this was not the first such incident. People have lost their lives on these killer ferries far too often. Vehicles have also sunk into the channel. This year alone, several such incidences have been reported.
Yet, despite the persistence of tragedies, it has remained business as usual for the KFS. No visible efforts have been made to improve the services and offer tax-paying mwananchi a good deal. The dangers remain visible and the authorities silent. A major tragedy is on the horizon if nothing is done to improve the current status.
Of the key issues that require urgent attention, the first one is the replacement of aged ferries. The national government has for too long ignored and underfunded KFS. The Trasport ministry must urgently set aside funds to purchase at least five new ferries for use at the channel.
Secondly, KFS must urgently hire qualified personnel to safeguard wananchi from calamities. These personnel should include lifesavers who are properly trained and equipped to immediately intervene in the event of a drowning.
Besides lifesavers, the ferry should hire qualified divers to retrieve items and persons who drown. It is embarrassing for KFS to have failed to recover bodies from the channel days after the tragedy.
Mombasa has many capable and experienced local divers who should be hired to do the work at KFS. The case of Mariam and Amanda is symptomatic of the dilapidated infrastructure and poor services at parastatals at the Coast. Government must be serious and improve their support of development in the region.
