Kipchumba Murkomen, Cabinet Secretary for Transport and Roads, believes he deserves credit for cutting the generator delay time at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) from 2 hours to about 30 minutes.

Murkmomen believes he has worked hard enough to iron out the airport's existing power issues whenever the now-regular nationwide blackouts occur.

On Thursday, Murkomen argued that the airport's management team purchased two generators in August, but they were inefficient when a power outage occurred days later due to "unsuccessful synchronization."

He added that the same technical issue prevented the same generators from being activated during the second nationwide blackout in November.


Did you read this?

  1. CS Murkomen Revives Debate On Shelved Finance Bill, Sports Tax Cuts
  2. Murkomen Apologizes For His Flashy Lifestyle As He Welcomes Nomination As Sports CS
  3. Traffic Cameras Among New Measures In CS Murkomen's Plan To Tame Rampant Road Accidents

"I was assured that they had been synchronized for automatic switchover as soon as electricity goes off. A month ago there was a blackout and the generator did not kick in the explanation I got was that the synchronisation was not successful," he said, speaking on Spice FM.

"It took about twenty minutes the August one took about two hours they they said they sorted it."

The most recent blackout, on December 10, also left a section of the airport in the dark for about 30 minutes before power was restored.

Murkomen claims that, while he did not wholly flip over the stone, he did provide a solution to the threat.

"People say that I promised the country that it will not happen again but you must give me credit to the fact that I reduced the madness from two hours to 20 or 30 minutes. It should take at most one minute, a good one should take about 5 seconds," added Murkomen. 


"I failed to get to zero the way I wanted to my expectations and we underestimated the depth of the problem. Having walked down to that level I can now say that we will move this problem to zero and we are not going to have the same problem happening."

To provide a long-term solution to the problem, Murkomen stated that the government will now purchase two more generators to serve as backups in the event of a power outage.

He also stated that he is strengthening the human resource capable of providing long-term solutions to the mistakes at the international standard airport.