Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga has distanced himself from reports claiming that he urged President William Ruto to sack Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir for incompetence and poor service delivery.
Defending the CS, Kahiga, on Wednesday, argued that the remarks attributed to his Jamuhuri Day speech were false and misleading.
He added that he wanted Chirchir's Transport counterpart, Kipchumba Murkomen, to be sent home instead over the constant blackouts witnessed at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).
To prove his point, Kahiga of the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party claimed that he was with CS Chirchir at JKIA when Kenya Power suffered a nationwide blackout on Sunday, December 10.
Chirchir was among those caught off guard by the outage, according to Kahiga, necessitating him to make frantic calls in an effort to understand the crisis and have the power restore
“I wish to clarify that I never demanded the sacking of CS Davis Chichir for the recent power failure in my Jamhuri Day speech. All I said is that I was with waziri (CS) at the JKIA when the blackout happened. I said he frantically made calls to have power restored.”
Speaking in Kiswahili during the Jamhuri celebration at Dedan Kimathi Stadium in Nyeri, Kahiga accused other CSs of relapse and failing to aid Ruto in securing his manifesto.
According to Governor Kahiga, power failure at the JKIA was a national embarrassment necessitating the need to fire the Cabinet Secretary in charge of the airport, Transport CS Kipchumba Murkomen.
Energy CS Davis Chirchir had earlier lamented that power went off at JKIA, delaying his exit from the international airport.
“I was at the airport when the conveyor stopped and we could not get our luggage. It is a challenge that we are really ashamed of as a country and we need to address it."
"There are so many constraints in the transmission of electrons from where they are generated and sometimes the networks trip when they are overloaded,” Chirchir complained.
The recent nationwide power outage marked the third nationwide power blackout this year alone. JKIA was among the facilities affected by the blackout, with terminals 1A and 1E being affected after the generators failed to start.
