Transport CS James Macharia and Kenya Railways board has extended the term of acting Managing Director Philip Mainga pending the selection of a substantive chief executive.
Mainga
This comes against a backdrop of a sustained media warfare engineered by forces opposed to Mainga’s continued stay at the helm of the State corporation currently at the centre of implementing multibillion-shilling standard gauge railway (SGR) projects.
Board chairman Michael Waweru is believed to be spearheading bad press painting the acting MD and SGR initiatives in bad light, with the view of paving way for his preferred choice of CEO to succeed the sacked MD Atanas Maina, who is said to have been very close to him (Waweru).
Maina
It emerges that the anti-Mainga tirade is born out of his privileged knowledge and information on possible dodgy dealings at KR dating back to Maina’s rosy days with Waweru.
A long serving Commissioner-General at the Kenya revenue Authority, Waweru is said to have been using a sitting Nyeri County executive who used to run a Public Relations firm that did business with KRA throughout Waweru’s tenure.
The executive, whose name we shall withhold for now, is said to have been commissioned to dig imaginary mud on Mainga and projects under his mandate as a measure towards getting a certain engineer from Kieni in Nyeri County installed as new MD. Waweru, Maina and the said county executive all hail from Kieni.
Before his elevation to the helm of Kenya Railways, Mainga was a long serving General Manager in charge of Business Research. Knowledgeable sources say his 22 years of service at the public transporter exposes him to real and imagined enemies, due to his insider knowledge on previous shady dealings at the corporation.
