Salasya sends message to Mbadi over plans to privatise Kenya Pipeline
By Cynthia Lodite, August 12, 2025Mumias East Member of Parliament Peter Salasya has reacted to the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) privatisation plan while citing historical failures linked to previous state companies that went through privatisation.
According to the legislator, the government has yet to learn from the collapse of key state corporations, which, according to him, crumbled under the weight of privatisation, which is the Public-Private partnerships.
Salasya, while addressing Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi through his official X account on Monday, August 11, 2025, listed a number of previously owned by government companies that collapsed following the privatisation plan.
Likewise, Salasya argued that the key state corporations, including Telkom Kenya, Mumias Sugar, Rift Valley Railways, and Kenya Airways, crumbled due to the weight of corruption and poor management.
“Before any privatisation is done, the ghosts of Telkom, Mumias Sugar, Rift Valley Railways, and KQ still haunt us; they collapsed because of graft and mismanagement,” Salasya wrote.
He emphasised that the success of Safaricom was a rare exception among privatised ventures, should not be used as a justification for selling off critical national assets.
“Safaricom’s success just happened to be a rare exception, not the rule to go by, this is to @JohnMbadiN,” Salasya wrote.
KPC Privatisation
Notably, his remarks were made two weeks after a resolution to privatise Kenya Pipeline Company was reached during a Cabinet meeting chaired by President William Ruto on Tuesday, August 29, 2025, at State House, Nairobi.
At the time, the Cabinet approved the reinstatement of the Kenya Pipeline Company into the privatisation programme, setting the stage for a partial sale of government shares and listing of the strategic energy parastatal on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
According to a Cabinet statement, the move is part of a broader policy shift aimed at reducing the government’s role in business and enabling the private sector to take the lead in driving growth, efficiency and innovation.
“The Cabinet gave the green light for the reinstatement of Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) into the privatisation programme, paving the way for partial divestiture of government shares in a move aimed at democratising ownership by Kenyans at the Nairobi Securities Exchange and unlocking the company’s full commercial potential,” the statement said.