Wycliffe Nyamasege
The County Government of Homabay has demanded an apology from Nation Media Group (NMG) over a report published on its platforms that the county had spent Ksh360 million on building a stadium with little work to show for it.
In the story that was published on Friday with the title “Sh360 million later, Homa Bay stadium resembles lunar surface,” the media house reported that after a groundbreaking of the project about five years ago, the only thing the county can show for the project is a corrugated iron sheet fence surrounding the stadium land and craters created by excavation machines on site.
Terming the report as misleading and defamatory, Fredrick Odero, Minister for Sports, Culture, Tourism and Youths, stated that he was disappointed by the media house.
“…This statement is biased, inciting, defamatory, unprofessional and seriously misleading. I am seriously disappointed with the Nation Media team for this level of unprofessionalism, ” said Mr Odero in a statement.
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Odero accused NMG of rushing to publish the story without facts.
“It’s important that when you want information about any project by the government either county or national, you need to take your time and come to the area where the project is being done then you do an extensive interview of those on site, ” he said.
He pointed out that the ultra-modern 9,000-capacity stadium works started on July 7, 2019, and have only been going on for two months.
“The physical works progress achieved so far is at 18.6% (measured as mean weighted physical progress) and the time elapsed is 10.1% translating to approximately 2 months.”
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Some of the works, according to Odero, that the contractor has managed to carry out during the two months are site clearance, topsoil stripping and dumping, construction of natural gravel base layer within the athletic track, fill layers, excavation, construction of office store and demolition of the existing structures.
“The contractor on site has not been paid even a coin on this work, yesterday is when we had the first site meeting to know how the work is progressing on site.
“We are going to demand an apology from the Nation Media on this malicious post. I want to make it clear that we are determined to ensure the completion of this project irrespective of these media gimmicks, ” he said.
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