BY PIUS MAUNDU
China Roads and Bridges Corporation (CRBC), the company building the standard gauge railway, has embarked on a programme to transfer building technology and skills to Kenyans. Mr Allan Munge, the engineer hr charge of the project’s concrete batching plant at Emali in Makueni County. says the move is aimed at getting rid of Chinese nationals working on jobs that can easily be done by Kenyans in line with the government’s directive.
“The programme aims at training locals to become key technicians who can operate some of the unique Chinese equipment. We have seen Kenyans rise from being casual workers to critical plant operators,” Mr Munge said at SGR Section 7 in the outskirts of Emali on Saturday. He said he was one of the beneficiaries of the programme after he took over from a Chinese national as one of the few operators of the botching machine. Mr Munge said the number of Kenyan technicians has been growing gradually through training at Section 7, which is one of the main manufacturing plants for the second phase of SGR.
“Over 400 Kenyans have acquired skills and graduated to strategic technicians.” Head of human resource department Elizabeth Wambua said the company picks the trainees from among their casual workers. “This has drastically reduced the number of Chinese workers in this and oth-ers sections,” she said.
