Kenyatta University (KU) students have blocked sections of Thika Road causing a major traffic snarl-up along the highway.
Footages seen by The Kenya Times show a heavy traffic jam after students erected boulders and lit fires in the Kahawa area.
Adero Reagan, Representative of Students Residing Outside Campus, said the institution has experienced an outage for the past two weeks.
He stated that students will continue striking until their demands are met.
“For the last two weeks, we have not been having power. If this is the way they want us to go, then we will also move in this direction. We have decided that the is no business on Thika Superhighway until our demands are well restored,” Reagan said.
Authorities Silent Over the Issue
KU President Glen Karani said students staying at KM have been without electricity for a week. He stated that students will continue protesting until KPLC restores power.
“Students are here in this place because of the electricity issues. We have stayed in KM place where most of our comrades reside for one week without electricity. We are telling the relevant stakeholders to restore the power in the next 30 minutes. Failure to which our work is always injecting. We will close Thika Road,” Karani said.
Further, Karani said student leaders wrote to Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC), the area Member of Parliament (MP), and the Member of County Assembly (MCA), but power has yet to be restored.
“We reached out to the regional manager. We wrote a letter requesting that power be restored. Up to now they have not restored power. What they are doing is taking our transformer to another place which we are not going to allow,” he stated.
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Why KPLC Disconnected Power
Reagan stated that the students prevented KPLC from relocating the institution’s transformer to Runda, citing its large capacity.
“It is like there is no power, they just want to punish us because we blocked them from taking our transformer. We don’t want a transformer that will give us issues and we want them to reconnect power,” he said.
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KU Students Threaten to Block Thika Road Next Week
Additionally, Karani urged the government to address issues raised by students, including the new university funding model.
He warned that students would block the highway again next week to protest the model.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg. Next week, we will tackle the new funding model. We will block this road (Thika Road) again to make the government hear our pleas,” Karani said.
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