Transport Cabinet Secretary James Macharia on Wednesday, April 29 presided over the roll-out of auto-sanitising booths for train commuters in Nairobi.
It will now be mandatory for commuters at various train stations to go through the sanitising tunnels before boarding the trains.
The sanitising booths were manufactured by a state-owned agency, the Numerical Machining Complex (NMC).
Macharia revealed that the booths had been built at a cost of Ksh450,000 each, stating the need for Kenya to look inward for its manufacturing needs.
"We were able to produce this wonderful facility to safeguard our people. These are the solutions which we need.
"Because what is happening globally today is every country is for themselves. People are looking inwards to first save themselves.
"So if we rely on other countries to supply us with facilities such as this sanitiser booth or tunnel, it will take a long, long time," Macharia asserted.
An NMC official took journalists through the workings of the tunnel, revealing that they could design it with multiple walkways for use at busy stations.
"This tunnel operates by discharging (disinfectant) through tiny nozzles. It is a friendly tunnel that is cost-effective.
"It is able to capture 95-99%. You only need to spend a second walking through it. We can design very many tunnels with one, two or three walkways.
"These tunnels are suitable for stations such as this one," he stated at the unveiling held at the Nairobi Railway Station.
The tunnels are expected to be provided at other stations including Syokimau and Imara Daima.
Earlier in 2020, Kenya Railways signed a Ksh1 billion deal to acquire 15 commuter trains, metre-gauge Diesel Multiple Units (DMUs), from Spain.
The acquisition sealed on March 2, 2020 was in line with Kenya Railways' grand goal of increasing capacity on commuter services in the capital from 13,000 to 132,000 passengers a day by 2022.
The agreement was signed by Kenya Railways Managing Director Philip Mainga and officials from the Regional Ministry of Energy and Mobility in Mallorca, Spain. The trains were expected to ply various routes including from Nairobi to Syokimau, Embakasi, Thika, Kikuyu and Kitengela.
Controversy had emerged, however, due to the state of the trains with some of those to be brought in being as old as 25 years and had been rendered redundant in Mallorca, Spain after electrification of the line there.
Watch a video of the sanitizer booths being unveiled below:
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