Kenya Ports Authority Managing Director Catherine Mturi-Wairi has been sent on compulsory leave over failure to curb congestion at the port.
Over the last seven days the port of Mombasa has experienced a breakdown of systems for cargo evacuation which led to serious congestion at the facility.
KPA Board of Directors, sitting late into Wednesday night, said it is regrettable that Mturi-Wairi failed to take action despite numerous attempts by the board to highlight the challenge.
The Board has appointed Dr. Daniel Manduku, the National Construction Authority Chief Executive Officer, as the Acting Managing Director for two months.
“The Board observed that the above situation can only be explained by lack of effective leadership at the top, a non-responsive work culture work culture, consistent failure to implement Board resolutions and either absence of explicit performance targets or failure to implement them,” said KPA Board Chair, Michael Maina.
“Given that the MD is responsible for all these aspects of leadership and guidance on the expected delivery of service, the Board has resolved to send her home on compulsory leave with immediate effect.”
Transport PS Prof. Paul Maringa said Dr. Manduku is expected to turn around operations at the port within two months.
“Over the last seven days, we had over 22,000 containers at the yard. The MD could not explain this congestion. We have been camping at the port leaving at around 2:30am daily and by yesterday we were able to bring down the number to 12,000 containers at the yard,” said Maringa.
He said he has been at the port with two other Cabinet Secretaries; Adan Mohammed (Industrialisation) and Peter Munya (East African Affairs) to try and resolve the congestion
