Hailed as a modern bus park with enviable facilities including a modern cafeteria, an outpatient clinic and a police post, the Green Park terminus today is idle, only used occasionally by buses dropping and picking school kids during closing and opening times.
From the cost of acquiring the land where it sits to the millions the last administration pumped into the project to decongest the CBD, it is painful to see such a state-of-the-art facility left to waste, just because of incompatible politics and bad policies.
Just before the last general election, the Badi-led Nairobi Metropolitan Services carried out a number of test runs and many thought the venture was successful and only required some little changes to be fully operational. Then came the Hustler administration, which ushered in a populist team, including at City Hall.
The Sakaja-led administration in collaboration with the national government have engaged in a deliberate scheme to reduce and water down the gains of the previous administration, a move that is likely to lead to colossal waste of taxpayer money, as they shout themselves hoarse that they inherited a broke and wasteful government.
I wouldn't be wrong to sum this school of thought and mentality to be ‘broke and lacking in vision’.
The city centre (CBD) is today in mayhem and congested and one would have thought the relocation of matatus to Green Park was a godsend to help ease pressure on town.
Instead, the new county leadership has turned the town into an open-air market, with merchandise strewn all over, on footpaths and on roads. Nairobi is no longer attractive to any meaningful investment and is soon becoming a ghetto city, for peddlers only.
If you cannot run the Green Park terminus as a bus station, then relocate hawkers from the CBD to the space, instead of it lying idle.
