Posted on 07/07/2017 12:10:09 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
A Chinese-built bridge collapsed in Kenya two weeks after it was inspected by the president
A $10 million Chinese-built bridge in western Kenya, personally commissioned by president Uhuru Kenyatta, has collapsed. At least 27 workers were injured when the bridge broke on Monday (June 26). The government has halted construction and sent a team of engineers to investigate.
The collapse occurred less than two weeks after president Kenyatta visited the site as part of a campaign tour before general elections in August. Kenyatta, who is up for reelection, has been emphasizing his party’s focus on infrastructure projects, like a new railway between Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa.
The president promised to build the bridge in Busia county after a boat carrying 11 people capsized on the river, killing everyone on board. Kenyatta attended the funeral for one of the victims, a student.
The collapse isn’t good news for Chinese companies operating in Africa either. Over the past decade, as Chinese companies have won more contracts to build roads and other infrastructure projects across the continent, Chinese officials and companies have worked to overcome a reputation for poor quality and lax safety standards. Portions of a Chinese built road in Zambia were washed away by rains in 2009, and a hospital in Angola was evacuated when local officials feared it would collapse in 2010, incidents that were widely covered in local media.
(Excerpt) Read more at qz.com ...
“Africa wins again.”
The explanation is at #8.
If they last 15 years they will have served their purpose.
Where the heck is our leadership while this has been going on? Are they assuming that all of this is benign and that we're never going to face them militarily?
LOL! I hope they kept their receipts.
Kenyatta? A name from the past...
:(
Because Kenya is still in the “stick age” and the bridge needed to be built of concrete & steel.
“Kenyatta’s main rival Raila Odinga, who has frequently criticized the Jubilee party’s focus on mega projects, used the bridge collapse as a metaphor for the party overall. “This is a good sign of how they will tumble. When the monkey’s day to die draws nigh, all trees become slippery,” he told a rally in Siaya county.”
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Might be fun to watch a presidential debate there . . .
Turd world construction. A friend of mine was the project engineer on a rail project in Brazil. The short cuts the locals wanted to take were sobering. He stuck to his guns and got it done right.
If Kenya’s monetary system is modeled after the work of John Keynes, China won’t be getting paid much for their work anyway.
iIRC they already have and the results have already started failing in SF.
And Ford wants to make cars in China. Wonder how that will work out.
Your brush is too broad. Lots of US companies know how to manage Chinese companies to produce quality products that have excellent lifetimes. But, many indigenous Chinese companies still don’t know how to manage themselves.
You are nuts. The cost didn’t soar from $3.5 B to $6B due to repairs. Most of the alleged flaws were due to design and construction problems and are not related to China making the steel or welding the structures in Shanghai.
If you have a source, cite it.
Where was the construction material sourced for the Oakland Bay Bridge?
Have to remember that one
It’s not surprising considering how they perform at American universities.
All the golf clubs currently in my bag mostly made in PRC. Heads, shafts, ferrules. Don’t know where the Golf Pride grips I put on them were made but probably over there too. I only buy used clubs because they are so cheap. Thanks China. I am now 70 and can hit every club in the bag from driver to sand wedge as far or farther than when I was in my 40’s using Arnold Palmer irons forged in the USA with US made True Temper shafts and Taylormade metalwoods made in the USA. Titleist balls still made here and that’s what I use (unless its a water hole).
Good old American “developers” built plenty of “streets” in their new subdivisions just that way. I personally saw trucks delivering construction material for the new high=dollar homes break through the asphalt into the dirt/mud ! The developers turn the roads over to the local city/county who get stuck with paying for a complete rebuild. At least in my locality the developers NOW must build streets to state standards.
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