Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) has announced that the maintenance of the newly-built Green Park Terminus will be bankrolled by a variety of daily charges at the facility.
Speaking to the press on Monday, May 3, NMS Transport and Public Works Director Engineer Michael Ochieng stated that maintaining the park was an expensive affair that would require innovative ways of generating funds.
The fee, which will also be charged on advertisers and the users of the ablution blocks, will be used in running the facility constructed at a cost of Ksh200 million.
The charge will be used to help the terminus' management in fumigation, maintaining safety measures as well as keeping the facility clean.
“The park will operate a certain fee, a token fee, which enables its sustainability. It will translate to what activities will be within the park, what traders will sell, (and) use of the ablution blocks, among others.
“If you put an ablution block to be completely free you are killing it. How will it be sustained? We have the toilets in the CBD where people pay (to use) and the money is used to keep the place clean and pay those who keep them clean," he told the Nation.
The facility will have message boards, a supermarket, as well as a health center and traders will be allocated spaces to sell their goods inside the facility.
Ochieng disclosed that the agency was yet to settle on exact fees that would be charged since discussions involving stakeholders were still underway.
A police station has already been put up on the facility and the facility is also expected to host financial institutions and eateries among other business all of which will part with a token fee.
Towards the end of April, NMS carried out a three-hour test run on the facility and admitted that the impending matatu ban from the Central Business District was still a work in progress.
For three hours, all matatus operating at the Railways Bus Terminus were blocked from accessing the CBD and only picked and dropped passengers at Green Park stage near Uhuru Park. However, the drill created confusion among motorists and commuters and also caused a traffic snarl in the city.
NMS, under Director-General Mohammed Badi, planned to see how passengers would connect to CBD once the ban is fully enforced in May 2021. Most of the commuters who were caught up in the test run walked all the way to the CBD from the stage, with some having even alighted before reaching the terminus.
Ochieng argued that the test run was a success as it had proven that the matatus plying Ngong Road route could be accommodated at the terminus.
However, they will have to improve the vehicle passenger dropping off, restructure common exits and re-analyse how commuters would connect to walkways to CBD.
