to construct a railway line with American specifications, the contract proposes a line with Chinese specifications.
He said clarity in the specifications will have an influence on the total cost of the project and other factors such as the quality of steel to be used.
“Depending on the standard that will be used the cost implications will certainly be very different, Mr Chairman I would like to believe in what the CS has been saying but I don’t know at what point they will vary what is being discussed, because the contracts talks about Chinese specifications,” he said.
Former Transport Minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere on Monday told the House team that the SGR line was his brainchild and was to be constructed using specification of ‘four feet and eight and a half inches’ which is used in both England and United States of America as the distance between the inside edges of the rails.
The committee has also summoned the Registrar of Companies to assist it in establishing the directors of a Chinese firm which won the tender to construct the multibillion shillings Standard Gauge Railway line from Mombasa to Nairobi.
This comes after both current and former government officials claimed that they were not aware of the owners of the firm despite it operating in Kenya for the past 30 years and also following the reports that its registration file is missing at the Registrar’s office.
Mwakwere who was the Transport Minister from 2005 to 2009, Kamau (current Transport CS), National Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich and the Attorney General Githu Muigai have separately told the committee that their level of involvement in the deal did not require they know the CRBC directors.
When he appeared before the committee on Monday, Mwakwere admitted to have approached CRBC after he Googled the company. He however said he never checked the company’s profile.
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