Nelson Amenya, the 30-year-old whistleblower who exposed the controversial Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) takeover by Indian conglomerate Adani Group, has let out another cat in the bag.
Speaking on Wednesday, Amenya stated that the dossier detailing the questionable deal reveals that Adani’s proposal (Performance Improvement Plan) demonstrates their intention to significantly reduce the number of airport workers.
Amenya went on to say that Adani has suggested to the Kenya Aviation Authority (KAA) that they look for departments where they can redeploy workers rather than laying them off.
“They (Adani) will reduce the workforce exponentially because obviously governments all over the world employ too many people and sometimes they are not working which also happens in Kenya. What Adani is asking KAA is to allow them to trim the team,” he said during an interview with KTN.
While withholding his sources to the documents, Amenya added that Adani seeks to increase the airport fees by 52% if they secure the deal.
He said the deal, posing as a smelling rat, will only poke deeper into Kenyans’ pockets without yielding any results.
“They are going to increase the airport fees by 52% with no upgrade. The passengers and airlines will not see any change but will have to pay more. Do you still want to tell me that we will still be competitive like we are today?” he posed.
“The fact remains that it’s a bad deal, it stinks.”
He futher intimated that out of the two documents submitted to the Public Private Partnership (PPP) committee, he observed a huge discrepancy between Adani’s feasibility report and that submitted by ALG, a global transport and infrastructure consulting firm.
“ALG was proposing JKIA to have up to 3 runways by 2034 but Adani said we do not need a second runway we only need to retarmacking our own and adding taxiways,” Amenya noted.
“The PPP committee was asking why Adani is not proposing a new runway while the ALG transactional advisor advised on a new runway by 2035. Adani is not going to touch our runway until 2028. Even the new terminal is not going to be ready until 2029.”
According to reports ALG submitted their report in February 2024 and Adani presented theirs in March.
ALG recommended that even though a public-private partnership was a logical proposition, it would be best to use an open tendering system.
ALG’s report stated that an open tender process is the best international practice and was the default procurement method in the Kenyan PPP regulations.
Adani on the other hand in its proposal, opposed an open tender process as it would lead to time wastage.
Following a shutdown strike on September 11 by aviation workers, the government made an agreement that the workers would have veto power over the Adani deal, hence no agreement would be signed by the government without their involvement and green light.
The official documents of the proposed Adani deal have been availed to the aviation workers’ as per their demands, and that they would have a 10-day window to go through it and raise their concerns where necessary.
Amenya is currently pursuing a Masters in Business Administration at HEC Paris in France.
