Re: Coast Water again !! & The 192nd reminder.... to the PERSON/S CONCERNED - Burst sewage pipe..

The following was sent to me by an ex-resident of Coast Province and it tells it's own story....

The recipients of my constantly lamenting emails in the form of 'reminders', must be wondering why they don't get the usual weekly ones. That is because, the MOWASCO has decided to disconnect my meter until such time (if it ever happens in my lifetime), that we get water consistently. At such a time, they have written to me, that they will re-connect my meter at no charge! At least, now, I will not be the recipient of phantom water bills, thank God!

But, recent 'developments' plus the email below prompts me to carry on.....

There's been the usual pipe burst en route from Mzima since last week and even the water kiosks which have reduced this 'city' into something worse than a village, have not had water for us to buy. Therefore, and since water is life, people are having to buy suspect bore-hole water indiscriminately. In the process, probably starting many avoidable water borne diseases. All thanks to the incompetence of the various water bodies that this awful and bloated government has given birth to. In this case the main culprit is the Coast Water 'Dis'Services Board (CWSB).

This morning, when I rang the MD of MOWASCO to find out when 'normal service', would be resumed, I was told, 'on Friday'. I mentioned to him a very likely scenario of another pipe burst while trying to get water to the water kiosks and he invoked God's help. Now, I also believe in a God, of course, but, there's a limit to how much you can blame Him for the pipe bursts and other mishaps that the water officials in this country would us to believe. Most of these are because of an ineffective, bloated and totally useless bunch of people employed by the GoK to provide this service to Kenyans. They love passing the buck and they don't even feel ashamed to do this to our Creator!!!!

Another friend, a few days ago, also informed me that they're having water problems because, lawless Kenyans (and there are so many of these it boggles the mind), have intercepted their water supply pipes along the way and now they are having to buy from the same crooks. They live in Ganjoni. I wonder if the Water officials will investigate and do anything about this......, if ever.


Chris Dickenson wrote:

So Many New Buildings -
But Coast Water Board Is Asleep

Coast Water Board should supply area wise at certain times on a daily basis. It is no wonder that the cement factories are expanding - because so many new buildings are coming up all over.

But the Coast Water Board is asleep.
It is no wonder the Power people who light our homes are expanding because they have realized the potential of making money by expansion.

But the Coast Water Board is asleep.
It is no wonder that Telephone companies are making money in a big way because they too have discovered that people want their services.

But the Coast Water Board is asleep.
It is no wonder that banks are making money in a very big way because they have realized that money is to be made from grass root levels.

But the Coast Water Board is asleep
If the Coast Water Board cannot supply water constantly to the suburbs and industrial parks then they should supply area wise at certain times on daily basis by giving a timetable in the local papers. This would help households get fresh water for daily needs. And of course much much more money for the Coast Water Board.

Signing off in the hope that the people responsible of supplying water at the coast especially Nyali Area will take some action.

Shanti Shah
Mombasa

Noise in the name of functions and religion - 37th reminder to NEMA and others concerned....

Starting from Friday night, this neighbourhood which includes two hospitals, has had to put up with noisy functions every night held at the MWA Hall.

Calling the cops is an exercise in futility and the answers one gets are as follows....

1. But these people have permits to hold these functions.

While this is true and the moron who gives them these permits seems to be totally oblivious to the fact that this hall is in a residential neighbourhood and therefore will be disturbing the entire place including the patients at the two hospitals. Does this person even give this a thought before giving this permit? And if so, why does not this person also tell them that this permit does NOT include noise making which will disturb the entire neighbourhood?

2. The other 'excuse' that these moronic cops give is that they do not know where this hall and only tell you this after you've rung them up a second of third time when you notice that there's been no reduction in the noise after over an hour or so! When you give them the directions, they will assure you that somebody will come..... no time scale given, of course.

Why don't these cops answering the phone at emergency, know the lay of the land that they are supposed to be policing?

3. When after yet another half an hour or so, there's no reduction in the noise level, you ring them, again, the cop will tell you to have patience since the cops are coming there on foot! I asked them what had happened to their patrol cars and they say that they are not working!!!!

We seem to have gone back full circle to the time when we would call cops and they in turn would insolently tell you to come and get them since they had no transport! This time I rang up a more reasonable cop whose number I mercifully had and who has since been transfered to Kisumu, and he told me that they had only one car and that was transporting a dead body to the mortuary. How very interesting. Transporting a dead body which was beyond help, anyway, was more important and could not be done by an ambulance, than other issues that concerned the living!

Of course, by this time the time limit given by the the permit giver, has come, keeping the entire neighbourhood awake in the process. Is this what the cops have been doing? Wasting our time and money in countless phone calls but not doing their job?

Will anything ever change in this country? Where the people given the job of keeping the peace e.g., the police and NEMA, do their jobs and earning their keep in the process? Coast Province is especially inundated by more noise than the rest of the country since it is more lawless where no 'officialdom' really works for the betterment of the people. Only God can help us now, I think.

What we pay taxes for, I just don't know....

My experiences at our Immigration offices, today

1. I went with the duly filled and signed forms that I had downloaded from our Immigration website and printed from the Internet. But, the receiving official at the Customer Care desk refused to accept them saying that I HAD to get the forms (they are/were no different from the ones I had printed and filled), from them (by force?!), and was compelled to fill them up, yet, again.

2. When I objected, a whole lot of 'immigration officials' suddenly materialized and started using threatening tactics by telling me to leave and not make noise or they would call the askari!

3. Due to all this hullabaloo, time was wasted and despite filling up 'their' form, again, they would not continue with the processing as it was, now, their lunch time. They told me to go and come back at 2.00 pm.

If, downloading, printing and filling these forms from the Immigration website is not acceptable to your immigration 'officers', why make this allowance on the web page?

Is this some kind of racket to force us to pay the extra 40/-? If so, why?

Since I am disabled, why aren't these 'officers' sensitized about dealing with such as well as the old and the sick?

I ended up forcefully sitting there till 2.00 pm when the only sympathizing person there called Naomi, promptly dealt with my forms and I was out of there around 2.30 pm. I had ended up sitting there for over 2 hours!

Now, our GoK, claims that their offices are 'e-govt'. If so, why this attitude from their 'employees'? They, like our Municipal Council, might be having computers, etc., but haven't started using them to their full potential. And they might as well be living in pre-computer days and not in the 21st Century and in the process neither the attitude of these 'officials' nor their thinking has changed an iota, unfortunately.

Please, help,

Continued harassment by the neighbours...

I've written about this topic many times before, but, the Council to whom this estate belongs, has done absolutely NOTHING to alleviate this problem suffered by one of their tenants.

Nearly every weekend, we have to contend with noise at night coming from the Mombasa Women's Hall across from our estate and next to the Aga Khan Hospital and because there are no applicable laws or regulations regarding noise in residential areas, anybody can also hold a very loud party at their residences, also. This happened on Saturday night.

We were inundated by noise from two sources - the hall and the terrace of a block of flats behind us and opposite to the Little Angel's Nursery School. It took the cops at least half an hour to act and do something about this, when called.

Then, last night, there was another very noisy function again at the MWA Hall and this time repeated calls to the police brought excuses like it was taking a long time to get there (over an hour!), because they were far. One has visions of only ONE patrol car covering the whole of Mombasa like in the nasty old days. When, they eventually showed up there was only half an hour remaining for the 'merry makers' to continue with their racket, i.e. 10.30 pm. And since 'officialdom' seems to have come up with a time at which we can go to bed (including the sick in the nearby hospitals), which is 11.00 pm, there was only this ridiculous time remaining for these goons to stop.

So, we all collectively went to bed at nearly midnight, IF, we could immediately 'switch off'!

Now, mercifully, I have a speaker doorbell and at around 11.35-.40 pm, my doorbell was continuously pressed over and over again, in the hope that I would eventually get out of bed to answer. Since I live in the kind of neighbourhood which abounds with thugs and crooks of all kinds, and have suffered similar harassment previously, I decided to keep all my lights off and got up to check on my car from the balcony. This is liable to get damaged, if this person or persons unknown got no response from me at the doorbell.

I stood in the balcony for a while to see if anybody decided to show up, but, saw no one and therefore went back to bed. After about an hour of trying to get back to sleep and couldn't due to a colossal headache and this disturbance of being woken up from a sound sleep, I got up again to have some medicine to fix the headache. For this, I had to put on the lights and within a few moments the doorbell went off, again! This time, I quietly picked up the receiver and listened, but heard not a sound from outside and I disconnected it so that I wouldn't be able to hear the racket made by the bell over and over again. This person was not just disturbing me, but, the entire immediate neighbourhood since the bell also rings on the outside. Well, it continued doing this but had quit ringing inside the house.

He continued this off and on till late into the night. And it had to be a 'he' for no self-respecting 'she' would be hanging around on a staircase at such an ungodly hour of the night and it had to be a neighbhour for why would a strange person bother to climb 3 flights of stairs to bother somebody at such an hour? Unless he was paid or had a self-interest in harassing me.

All this seems to have coincided with a meeting I attended on Saturday where Kenyans are taking a pro-active part in doing something about our unaccountable and bloated government. Since I have two very questionable politicians as my neighbours, could this be a way of showing their distaste, as neither of them are capable of answering questions that the public would like to ask them without showing cavemen tactics of the type that I continue to suffer at their hands.

Will officialdom, do something about this continued harassment which is liable to graduate into a more dangerous situation as time goes by....?