Youths control vehicles at Kenya Water Institute in South C, Nairobi, following a downpour. [Collins Kweyu]
Losses occasioned by the ongoing heavy rains that have left at least 132 people dead could run into billions of shillings.
Livelihoods have been lost, thousands of man-hours wasted in traffic and hospital beds and property worth billions of shillings washed away by floods that have ravaged different parts of the country.
National Treasury, with its tight budget, has been forced to call for fundraising, with the government expected to spend Sh200 billion to deal with the disaster.
Prices of essential foodstuffs have gone up as fewer crops have found their way from gardens to the market. Homes and businesses have been left without power as floods have felled electric poles and lines.
SEE ALSO :Heavy rains leave trail of havocDifferent regions have been disconnected due to broken bridges as heavy rains continue unabated.
Timothy Njagi, a research fellow at the Tegemeo Institute, a public policy think-tank affiliated to Egerton University, said the biggest problem is in the grain basket regions, including Northern and Southern Rift.
Critical cereal
In these areas, maize, a critical cereal for most households in Kenya, is being harvested.
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Njagi noted that when the grain is subjected to moisture at this point, there is risk of aflatoxin contamination. Aflatoxin is a toxin produced by fungi due to exposure to moisture.
He said that the country’s post-harvest losses of maize stand at 12 per cent, or about five million bags. But the floods might aggravate this loss, throwing the country’s food security into a tailspin.
SEE ALSO :It will be a wet Mashujaa weekend as floods alert issued“The government needs to map out the areas in distress and know the kind of intervention to undertake in those areas.
“As far as fruits and vegetables go, the biggest problem is access to the market as they are highly perishable. The biggest problem now is that the roads are impassable. Such commodities might reach the market at an additional cost.
“If the roads are impassable, that is total loss,” said Njagi.
George Omoso, a trader at Marikiti Market, said floods tend to affect supply of crops like Irish potatoes, pineapples and watermelons, with cabbages mostly rotting on farms.
Roads, too, have been destroyed by the floods.
SEE ALSO :Floods wreak havoc in Turkana region – PhotosJohn Cheboi, communications director Kenya Urban Roads Authority said the damage is big and might take time to assess.
“Until the rains subside, we might not know the extent of the damage,” said Cheboi.
“We have short-term fixes which entail making passable road segments that have been washed away…,” he said.
Acting National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani has indicated that the government might be forced to spend some money to repair roads, bridges and electric poles that have been swept away by the floods.
In addition to the Sh10 billion contingency kitty, the government plans to mobilise funds from Kenyans and foreigners in the next three months to mitigate against floods that have affected 43 counties.
SEE ALSO :Ten killed in raging floodsYatani noted that the destruction to property, including key infrastructure such as roads and bridges, called for urgent interventions by the Government.
Natural disasters
Treasury, which has already indicated that it is hard-pressed to finance its budget from its own revenues, is trying to avoid spending more than its projected budget of Sh3 trillion.
National Treasury Principal Secretary Julius Muia recently said more than 70 per cent of natural disasters in Kenya result from extreme climatic events such as droughts and floods.
“The economic costs of droughts and floods is estimated to create a long-term fiscal liability equivalent to about 2.4 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product each year,” he said.
Earlier this year, the State Department noted that the government had spent Sh20 billion on drought and flood mitigation from November 2016 to April this year, which affected 3.4 million people.
Treasury says in its Budget Policy Statement for 2019 that the floods experienced in 2018 impacted on agriculture, infrastructure such as electricity poles and transformers, roads, bridges and therefore affect households, both directly and indirectly.
The government plans to do disaster risk management planning, noting that the cost of dealing with disasters when they happen is seven times bigger than the cost of prevention.
Disasters such as floods and drought result in lower tax revenues and increase public spending as the government pumps money to mitigate the resulting natural disasters, according to the 2019 budget statement.
“In particular, climate change results in substantial reallocation of resources towards mitigation, adaptation to climate change and addressing emergence of natural disasters,” it says.
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Related Topics
Heavy RainsFlashfloods
