As politicians battle to please the votes, the issue of maintenance of existing roads and creating new ones is a thorn in the flesh to the leaders in both the national and the county governments.
People have now used to the scenario of politicians denying and confusing the local on whose responsibility a road falls under.
There are instances where politicians jump to cry for credit when there is a successful road project and deny responsibility when it comes to issues related to the bad state of roads. This has left the residents of various parts of the upper eastern confused on who is responsible for the maintenance of specific roads.
Recently Tharaka Nithi Governor Muthomi Njuki and Maara MP Kareke Mbiuki revealed a plan of combining resources available in their respective offices to work on the roads together. They agreed that the Member of Parliament will be opening new roads by the use of dozers while the Governor will grade them and provide murrum to make them usable.
The two politicians agreed that what ordinary citizens require is a good road. They do not care who maintains them, because they elected all of them.
For this reason, The Eastern Newspaper is revealing the classification of roads in Kenya to get rid of this confusion that is sometimes witnessed even with government officers.
According to the Kenya Roads Act, 2015 the process of Road classification in Kenya takes into account the function the road serves i.e. If the Road serves as a link between centers of international importance, crossing international boundaries or terminating at international ports is a Class A road.
Similarly, if road links nationally important centers, provincial towns, or an urban center is a Class B road.
Class C roads link provincially important centers to each other while roads linking locally important centers to each other or a more important center, or a higher class road it is a class D Road while any road linking a minor center, market, or local center is a Class E Road is also referred to as minor roads.
All these roads fall under the national governments and are maintained by the road authorities under the ministry of roads and transport.
In addition, there are other Classes of road that are classified as per usage that purely falls under the respective county governments that are responsible for opening and routine maintenance, they include;
Forest Roads are in Class F, roads serving Schools, Hospitals and Government Institutions fall under Class G, roads leading to coffee growing areas are Class K Roads while the roads accessing settlement schemes are Class L Roads.
Other roads under the county government s include roads to the National parks that are in Class P, roads accessing rural areas are classified as class R, while those in sugar-growing areas Class S, the ones used in accessing tea-growing places Class T Roads.
Others are roads accessing wheat-growing areas Class W and those leading to areas with mineral deposits classified as Class U Roads.
The county governments are also responsible for all the other unclassified rural roads within their areas of jurisdiction.
