President William Ruto on Tuesday lashed out at Kenyans who have been criticising the government on the plans to modernise the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) through private-public partnerships, terming them as unpatriotic.
Speaking during the opening of Devki Iron Ore Pelletisation Plant on December 2 in Taita Taveta, Ruto insisted that the government will not disembark from the plans to modernise JKIA.
According to Ruto, those attacking the government, particularly on social media, lacked alternative ideas on how best to develop key infrastructure such as airports despite their criticisms. He accused them of sabotaging investors who had shown interest in investing in Kenya.
"Sometimes, when we have people who believe in Kenya, who want to invest in Kenya, such people, we sabotage them yet the people who sabotage our country, we glorify them as if they were anything,'' Ruto argued.
"Recently, I saw other people glorify those who stopped the construction of the airport as heroes, what heroes? The airport is in a tent. Other countries are building their airports yet ours is not built. What gain do you get when you stop the building of an airport in your country and you lack alternative ideas and you have no clue how it will be built,'' he added.
The President also defended the government's plans to bring in the Indian conglomerate of companies Adani International, insisting that the plans were in the best interest of the country.
Ruto added that the government is still committed to its plans to modernise the JKIA despite the exit of Adani from the project.
To achieve this, he announced that the government was actively working on a plan to have new ideas and proposals on how best to develop the country's airport infrastructure.
"Let me assure you we are going to build a new airport in Kenya. We may have stopped Adani from doing it. I was confident he was going to build our airport and he was going to do a good job but because of the law barring us from engaging with people who have cases, we stopped it but that does not mean we are not going to build the airport,'' Ruto stated.
"We are going to get a new framework, we are going to work with people who believe in this country to build a new airport for us because that is what the future looks like" he added.
Ruto's comments come against the backdrop of a recent announcement that he made during the State of the Nation address in Parliament on November 21, where he directed the Ministries of Transport and Energy to immediately cancel all engagements with Adani International.
''Accordingly, I now direct - in furtherance of the principles enshrined in Article 10 of the Constitution on transparency and accountability, and based on new information provided by our investigative agencies and partner nations - that the procuring agencies within the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum immediately cancel the ongoing procurement process for the JKIA Expansion Public Private Partnership transaction, as well as the recently concluded KETRACO transmission line Public Private Partnership contract, and immediately commence the process of onboarding alternative partners,” he announced.
Ruto made the comments when responding to Mining Cabinet Secretary Hassan Joho's comments on how a section of the Kenyan population was misusing social media to advance none issues, including negatively portraying the government.
"This is the only country where someone takes to social media to negatively comment about their leaders and use negative images to predict their fate," Joho stated.
