Embattled Kimunya now resorts to a new committee appointment to impose his agenda on JKIA expansion

DEFIANT KIMUNYA APPOINTS SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO OVERSEE AIRPORT EXPANSION
In what now clearly has become a game of who blinks first has Kenyas embattled Transport Minister Kimunya, no stranger to controversy after stumbling from scandal to scandal and having been removed from cabinet before, appointed a special committee to oversee the ongoing implementation of plans to substantially expand JKIA.
Jomo Kenyatta International Airport is Kenyas main aviation facility and has been suffering for years from capacity constraints, something the new project is supposed to address, adding a second runway and yet another major terminal to the existing facilities and those under construction already.
Meanwhile will the parliamentary committee appointed by the Speaker of Parliament start their work to investigate the circumstances under which Kimunya appears to have misled the house, when in a fumbling statement last week he failed to explain the circumstances under which he directed a contract between KAA and a Chinese construction firm to be cancelled less than a month after it had been signed.
Kimunya is a liability now and from the way things are shaping up, including his latest gimmick to appoint a committee of cronies, the parliamentary investigation very likely will result in him being censured again and having to quit or else be sacked. He is one chap who attracts controversy like few others. He sings anti corruption hymns but reality suggests otherwise. His latest gimmick when he appointed without any visible need a special committee to oversee the airport expansion, seems just another avenue he has now resorted to for delays or to impose his own agenda on the project. We can see no benefit from that otherwise a regular aviation source from Nairobi wrote in a message, when discussing the ongoing saga over airport expansion and the urgency to get a second runway built without any further delays.
It is understood that President Kibaki, whose two terms of office have been marked by his governments action on roads and infrastructure developments, including airports, may break ground as early as November this year to get the project off to a flying start, giving hope to airlines that the eternal congestion of JKIA will, give or take a few years, come to an end. Watch this space.