The flooring at Nakumatt Nyali Mall

I, and several others have noticed that the new floor tiling that is being done at the above mall/s, while quite attractive, are very impractical for walking on by the general public. This is especially so of the very shiny border tiles which are highly slippery when wet or sandy.

The sandy bit we've discovered yesterday, when some of the tiles were still not put in place and there was sand around them. Several members of the public slipped and nearly lost their balance, but, thankfully, did not fall. We would like to know who would take responsibility of such an eventuality when somebody slips and falls and gets injured? Would the company doing this work accept responsibility?

I ask this because, after I had slipped and nearly fell (I'm also disabled), I asked various senior staff at Nakumatt about whom to contact and they gave me Mr. Talasam Mohamed's business card whom I rang immediately giving my name and telling him what had happened. His response was quite unbelievable.

He claimed that the public would just have to be careful when walking on those tiles as his company cannot 'undo' the tiling and make it fit for walking by all people - young, old, fit and unfit. This, I find is a very insensitive response to a very legitimate complaint.

Then, there is the general observation of our various building constructions whose plans are passed by our Town Planning Dept. at our Council. Do ANY of these people give a moment's thought to the disabled people's plight and how the various members of the public with varying degrees of disabilities, are going to deal with the buildings whose plans they so thoughtlessly pass?

In the same way, this company which is doing the flooring of these malls, I don't think gave even a moment's thought to the fact that these tiles are quite impractical to walk on when wet, etc. And since they insist on carrying on with their work as is, I would like to know, if they will also bear the consequences of a person getting injured as a result? In other places of the world they have to or they would be sued.

When, I mentioned this to Mr. Talasam Mohamed, it did not bother him in the least and so, I told him that I would write this letter/email and send him a copy of it, too, to which he whole-heartedly agreed. I hope and pray that he will pass it on to the others in his company who are, I believe, more mature and responsible about these issues.

The saga of the burnt transformer

I have just found out from some of my neighbours whose houses are near this transformer that we, in this estate (Umoja), are going to be 'powerless' comes tomorrow morning at 8.30 am.

Now, this story has its beginnings sometime last week when we had one of our frequent and highly irritating and frustrating power outages early in the morning at around 7.00 am. Of course, Kenya Power (Weakness), hardly EVER answers their emergency lines and so it takes quite a while to rouse somebody in authority to deal with the latest outage. It took me at least 15 minutes to get such a person to take action.

Then, there's the matter of their emergency offices being all the way across town in Mbaraki from where their trucks and men have to come which includes crossing the one and only access to the North Coast, Nyali Bridge. At that time of the morning there are traffic snarl-ups there and so, this so-called emergency crew would take at least the better part of an hour to make it's way across this bridge and to any area in the North Mainland.

Well, on that day, there was supposed to be a problem around Nakumatt Cinemax and the 'official' working on it called me around mid-morning to ask if I had got my power back to which I replied, 'No!' He was very surprised with this answer as they had restored power and could not understand why we in this estate were still 'powerless'.

So, he decided to investigate and finally found that the transformer in the estate had just blown (my neighbours tell me that there was a big bang!), and there had even been flames. Of course, this meant that while the rest of the area had power, we were going to be without and this 'official' would not commit himself as to when it would be restored. The only thing he could tell me was that the matter was no longer in his jurisdiction and that he had informed his boss about it and it would be taken care of.

Well, I saw one of their cars coming in not long after and people working on the offending transformer. But, they left around lunch time and I never saw them working on the thing after, though, I found out today that they came back later in the afternoon and did something more and we got our power back, thankfully, after 4.00 pm.

Now, to come back to tomorrow. If we had a whole day's outage last week thanks to the burnt transformer and we believed that the work was done, why is it that without notice to us, the residents, is Kenya Power going to make us suffer (in this extreme heat), another 'powerless' day? What is it that they did last week? Or didn't do, for that matter?

And come to think of it, why did the transformer blow just as the power was being restored around Nakumatt Cinemax? Was it due to a power surge? Can somebody qualified enough out there investigate this, please? Why is Kenya Power making us suffer from these constant outages which result in a lot of damage? This outage has also not been advertized, yet it is going to (according to them), take 8 long hours of outage, i.e. we are supposed to get back our power at 5.00 pm and there is a big IF to this statement.

Can somebody at Kenya Power please, answer the above questions?