Uhuru slams Raila over Itare Dam Water Project

President Uhuru Kenyatta has assured the residents of Nakuru County that water scarcity witnessed in several parts of the county, especially Rongai, will be a thing of the past once the Itare Water Project is complete.

Speaking at Salgaa Shopping Centre during his tour to rally residents to register as voters, President Kenyatta said that those opposed to the project are people who lack vision.

This comes as debate to the now controversial government’s Ksh 38 billion Itare Dam Project heats up.

Late last year, the opposition Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) leader, Raila Odinga, alleged that the Itare Dam Project had been initiated to provide water for businesses owned by senior government officials.

Speaking in Narok in November 2016, Odinga insisted the project, if allowed to proceed, will be ecologically disastrous.

The CORD leader maintained that the 57 meter barrier to be built to tap water from the rivers snaking out of Mau was a potential ecological disaster that will affect at least five counties of Bomet, Nyamira, Migori, Kericho and Homa Bay with major projects at risk like the Sondu Mirio hydro-electric power and tea farming

The Ministry of Water, however, rubbished Odinga’s claims and endorsed the project as well-thought out

“We could not have spent over 100 million shillings of taxpayers’ money to design a project like Itare only to turn around to call it a secret project yet it was a project financed designed when he was Prime Minister,” said Water CS, Eugene Wamalwa.

The water project originates from the Mau water tower and terminates at the Itare dam in Kuresoi, Nakuru County

Itare dam is the second major water project after the Northern Water Collector Tunnel in Murang’a that Odinga has opposed citing lack of stakeholders consultation and adverse environmental impact.