of targets and lies

I wonder what it about kenyans that they can never respect timeliness or is it deadlines ? I attended a housing expo at KICC in 2005. we had this wonderful offer of housing where everyone was supposed to pay only 4 million for a 4 bedroom maisonette with DSQ , community shopping center, nursery school , perimeter wall etc. and further it was supposed to be in south B only 10 minutes drive in the traffic. the catch was that you had to pay 10% immediately and then finish the whole amount in 3 months time. the construction was promised to complete by July 2006! to date these 'developers' have not even done the ground breaking thing a whole two years down the line. and those who gave out their money cannot get it back without losing 10% of the 10% down payment as administrative costs. the same story is told by those who bought into the diamond park idea which also started in 2005. that particular development at least is almost finished but is about 1 and half years out of its target finish date. The same applies to phenom and many others.

At Bandari villas, arguably one of the best new residential estates, workers are being laid off yet most houses have only their walls put up. the show house is ready and magnificent. However the workers are being laid off at this time when 26 out of the 42 houses in phase 1 do not even have the ring beam. yet the target time of completion is September 2007, only two months from now.

But maybe this target thing is as Kenyan as the kibaki govt promising constitution review by March 2003 then by June , then by 2005 then never! or the ODM fellows keeping on moving time lines and having all sorts of excuses. My frustration is that such kind of lies and laziness it is very costly especially for a country which wants to become industrialized by 2030. nothing can ever be done if you don't have deadlines which you respect. its also very disrespectful to the customers here also referred to as investors. 4 million shillings in 2 years is a lot of money even if you are conservative enough to put it in a fixed deposit at EABS which gives 10% p.a. on each million.