Attorney General Kihara Kariuki I seeking a petition filed by two activists before the Mombasa High Court seeking disclosure of details of the Sh450 billion contract dismissed, terming it a frivolous case.
The AG says that Ms Wanjiru Gikonyo and Khelef Khalifa have not exhausted all avenues of dispute resolution available to them, and that the petition was not properly before court. Mr Khalifa had, in letters dated December 16 2019 and May 13 this year, written to the AG and Principal Secretaries in the Ministries of Transport and the National Treasury requesting details of the agreement between the Kenyan government and all service providers or third parties involved in operation of the SGR
The AG also requested for all contracts for carrying out feasibility studies relating to the construction, operation and servicing of the SGR and all documents relating to expression of interest for the financing, construction, management and servicing of the railway. In his grounds of opposition, however, the AG argues that the petition is frivolous and an abuse of the court process for not providing any proof of the existence of the request for information.
“Lack of the request for information infers that the petitioner did not follow up the matter exhaustively and should not be granted audience by the court. The existence of the request for information is at the centre of the petition and its non-existence renders the petition incurably defectively, there is no petition without request for information alluded,” argues the AG.
According to the AG, should the court not strike out the petition, it will occasion misuse of the court’s time and resources.
“The lack of request for information infers that the petitioner did not follow up the matter exhaustively and should not be granted audience by the court,” argues the AG.
Public documents
The petitioners want all contracts, agreements and studies related to the construction and operations of the SGR made public, arguing that keeping the documents confidential violates the law and discourage transparency in governance They argue that documents related to the project and its financing have never been made public despite it being the most expensive project undertaken by the government.
Petitioners also observed that fundamental information about the project’s financing, tendering process and construction has not been released to the public. They argue that the National Treasury began loans repayments for the project in January 2019 to the tune of Sh74 billion to date, and increased to Sh111 billion after a second loan became due in January this year.
“Further, the SGR is operated by Africa Star Railway Company Ltd, a private company, which is paid operating costs in excess of Sh1 billion per month. Thus its operations are not generating funds to help pay back the loans that financed its construction, it is not publicly known what the consequences of a default in loan repayment would be, according to the agreement between Kenya and China,” argue the petitioners.
