A deadly phenomenon of road accidents involving trucks and tractors transporting sugarcane for West Kenya Sugar factories has erupted in Western Kenya sending chilling shock wave alarms across the region.
Chilling shockwave alarms because the perpetrators of the accidents appear to doing it with reckless impunity and getting away with it because of the powerful financial and political influence of the owners of the factories – the Rai Group.
The other critical factors is that innocent lives are being lost while others are being maimed by the drivers of these trucks and trailers with literally no compensation to the affected families bringing into question why the police are not taking any action as the law is breached with impunity.
This state of affairs has seen the evolvement of extremely dangerous accident black spots that have become notorious for causing the deaths of many people with no end in sight, right from Bungoma County, through Kakamega and Busia where Rai Group’s factories are heavily involved in rampant sugarcane poaching.
These spots are at Kamukuya in Bungoma County where West Kenya has established the notoriety of poaching sugarcane belonging to farmers contracted to the only sugar factory in that county – belonging to Nzoia Sugar Company.
The other is at “Shimalabandu” a Luhya word meaning finishing People area on the Kakamega – Webuye highway on the way to where the West Kenya Sugar factory is located at Kabras area in Kakamega County.
The third is found right outside another of Rai Group’s sugar factory constructed under controversial circumstances at Olepito area, near Tangakona town on the Busia – Mumias highway – the factory is built right close to the busy highway where its heavy duty cane transporting trucks and tractors turn in and out of the factory gates with reckless abandon.
At the Kamukuywa black spot in Bungoma County Kamukuywa Bridge the most recent accident involved a matatu and cane tractor belonging to West Sugar Company. 7 people perished in the Maliki Market road accident, just 600 metres from the notorious Kamukuywa Bridge where About 14 died in a similar accident a few days earlier.
The accident involved a matatu which was heading to Kitale from Kamukuywa and a cane tractor belonging to West Kenya Sugar Company which was coming from the opposite direction. In the earlier accident, a Nissan Matatu being driven from Kitale collided head-on with a cane trailer at the notorious bridge, the very same spot where 14 family members died in a similar accident back in 2017.
To make it worse in May this year, seven people died on the spot while 5 others sustained serious injuries after a grisly road accident near the Kamukuywa Bridge on Friday night. The accident at 9pm occurred when a 14-seater matatu that was en-route to Kitale from Kamukuywa Town rammed into a stationary sugar tractor. The bodies were later moved to the Kiminini Morgue.
According to eyewitnesses, the tractor that apparently belongs to the West Kenya Sugar Factory had dysfunctional headlights. Angry residents who gathered at the scene of the accident on Friday set the tractor ablaze as the driver and turn boy fled.
They threatened to torch other tractors that they claim are causing accidents near the bridge. The story does not stop there since the crash occurred just 600 meters from a spot on the bridge where 8 other people perished in a similar accident involving a matatu and a tractor belonging to the same company.
The death toll of accidents on the bridge in under six months now stands at 34. Nine people from the same family also died at the same spot after the vehicle they were travelling in collided head on with another sugarcane tractor – the question is why all these road carnage and or massacre from a sugarcane poacher?
At the Kakamega Shimalabandu black spot, as recently as last month five people riding on one motorcycle were killed in a head-on collision between the bike and a West Kenya Sugar Company cane transporter.
In yet another recent Red Cross Report, at the same spot 51 Casualties 35 treated & discharged 16 admitted 1 Dead involving that company’s truck and a bus plying the same route and yet more is yet to come.
At the company’s factory in Busia county’s gate one many people have lost their lives including a Nambale Deputy sub-county commissioner formerly District Officer Mrs Kisaka when the Matatu she was riding in ploughed into a trailer transporting cane from the factory suddenly entered into the highway.
It is from this Olepito centre that West Kenya Sugar Company which has no contracted farmers, stores sugarcane poached from Busia farmers is stored before it is loaded on heavy duty trucks for onward transportation to the factory in Kabras for processing more than 120 kilometres away.
It is through these activities that deadly road accidents have erupted on the Busia – Mumias Highway like it had never been witnessed before in the history of that highway yet the perpetrators are getting with open massacres.
