Thika Super Highway Shut Down as Furious Residents Protest Child Kidnappings
Normal operations on the busy Thika Super Highway got completely derailed ON Wednesday afternoon, 14th January, when angry residents took to the streets in the Witeithie area of Kiambu County to protest the outrageous rise in child kidnappings. Traffic ground to a halt as a result of the demo.
According to what witnesses were saying, these demonstrators had blocked off a section of the highway in order to bring attention to their complaints that the authorities were doing nothing about the really disturbing number of kids going missing.
The residents were claiming that no less than 3 children had gone missing in that area over the past month & were getting pretty scared and angry about it. They said that local law enforcement had been doing next to nothing in response, leaving parents on edge worrying whether their kids were safe or not.
” We’re at a breaking point here. Our kids are getting snatched and nobody seems to be doing anything about it,” one mum – who was at the scene talking to journalists, told them.
Things got even more heated after yesterday’s abduction – when a Grade 8 schoolgirl was reportedly taken by a couple of individuals driving a black car. That seems to have been the final straw for the residents, who decided to stage a protest.
Social media was flooded with pictures and videos of hour-long queues of cars & protesters stopping the highway by chucking stones & setting tyres alight, effectively closing the road for the day. This is one of the country’s busiest roads, so any sort of disruption is a big deal.
At the time this was published, no police had been sent in to try and calm things down, so the protesters were free to keep blocking the road for hours on end.
It’s not the first time that communities living along this part of Thika Road have taken a stand by disrupting traffic. They say it’s the only way to get the authorities to actually take notice of the problems they’re facing. In fact, not too long ago – last September – exactly the same thing happened when residents of Juja, Kiambu County, blocked the road in a protest about all the hyena attacks they were experiencing in the area.
That particular protest happened after a 4 year old boy got snatched by a hyena & killed while he was out and about at a shop with his cousin. Residents were extremely upset – and from what they were saying at the time, the government had basically ignored their warnings and promises to do something about the problem.
Wednesday’s protest marked the 2nd major disruption along Thika Road in just 2 days, which was pretty rich considering that on Monday a serious traffic jam was caused by an accident involving a lorry and a 14 seater bus, which brought everything to a standstill near the GSU Headquarters in the Alsops area. Loads of people were forced to try and find alternative routes – some of them went via Kiambu Road, then onto the Northern Bypass before heading back onto Thika Road at Ruiru in a bid to avoid getting caught up in a massive traffic jam.
As the frustration builds among residents and commuters alike, the pressure’s really on for the authorities to get a grip on the situation and sort out both the security and traffic issues along the highway.
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Thika Super Highway Shut Down as Furious Residents Protest Child Kidnappings