Stop 06 on route 237
Two complaints dominate every gathering in Tola. Both have answers that fit inside a ward budget and a term of office.
On the ground
Clean piped water is the first. Where supply is unreliable, households buy from vendors at a premium, which means the people with the least money pay the most per litre. That is the quiet arithmetic of a water deficit, and it does not appear in any report.
The second is work. Thika is an industrial town with factories close enough to walk to, and young people from Tola still queue for casual work that ends the day the contract does. A day’s wage is not nothing. But casual labour pays today and teaches nothing, and a young person can do it for five years and be exactly where they started.
The difference between a wage and a trade is whether anyone structured the work to include training. That structuring is a negotiation, and a ward representative is well placed to lead it.
Casual labour on a ward contract is a real thing to be grateful for and a poor thing to build a life on. The pledge is to keep the wage and add the training.
Commitments
Three commitments for this stop, drawn from Maji na Heshima (Water & Dignity) and Mtaji Sio Makombo (Capital, Not Crumbs). Each one is written to be checked, not admired.
Named in every budget submission for the term, with what was requested and what was granted published each cycle. A priority that is never written down is a preference.
Negotiated with local factories: paid placements that carry a training obligation and end with a certificate rather than a gate pass.
Course, cost, entry requirement and the placement at the end of it, set out plainly, with the business desk to help with the application.
Your street
This page describes Tola as we understand it today. If we have missed something, or got something wrong, tell us. Corrections from residents carry more weight here than anything written in an office.
What we do with it
