The Mombasa Pastors Fellowship has announced a major fundraiser for the Second Thursday of November to support families affected by a fatal bus crash that killed 24 people, near Mtito Andei on October 25.

The Fellowship at the same time renewed calls for the government to expand the Mombasa-Nairobi Highway into a dual carriageway.

The crash occurred at Kanga, near Mtito Andei in Makueni County, when a bus belonging to Power of the Word Church International, carrying members of the Mombasa Pastors Fellowship, returning from the burial of a Bishop in Lugari Constituency, Kakamega County, collided head-on with a truck.

Twenty-four people, including three Mombasa pastors, died and others were injured; survivors were treated at Mtito Andei Sub-county Hospital, Kibwezi Hospital and Makindu Hospital.

Addressing journalists, Mombasa Pastors Fellowship Secretary General, Reverend Elijah Waini, said the Fellowship would run two separate fundraising streams going forward — one to cover funeral costs and another to establish an education fund for children left behind by the deceased, including four children of one pastor who died in the crash.

“Many times people remember only the funeral, but then they forget that after the funeral, there is still school fees to be paid. So, today, I have asked the pastors, let us do two funds,” Waini said.

He thanked the Makueni County Government for waiving hospital bills and postmortem fees for victims, and for assisting with ambulances to transport patients, alongside the Mombasa County Government, which he said also provided ambulances to ferry survivors and bodies back to Mombasa.

Reverend Waini confirmed that Mombasa Deputy Governor, Francis Thoya, attended the fellowship’s planning meeting, and appealed for President William Ruto, to personally attend the planned November fundraiser, noting the scale of the tragedy for the Mombasa church community.

“We want to give our people a decent send-off,” Waini said, adding that the fellowship is targeting a budget of Sh 10 million and considers the tragedy a countrywide crisis not one for Mombasa alone.

Waini said three pastors died in the crash, with a fourth injured pastor still receiving treatment at Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital, and that one body remained at Mtito Andei Sub-county Hospital pending handling by the relevant government office.

He also detailed the final hours of one of the deceased pastors, who sustained a severe head injury and was initially taken to a hospital in Kambu for emergency care before succumbing to his injuries; the fellowship organised his transport to Mombasa that evening, arriving at around 2:30 a.m.

The fellowship renewed its call for the Mombasa-Nairobi Highway to be upgraded to a dual carriageway, describing the corridor as a critical economic artery for Kenya and East Africa, that has remained a single carriageway since independence, despite carrying heavy freight and passenger traffic.

Waini rejected suggestions that driver fatigue or speed were to blame for recent crashes on the route, pointing out that the same explanation had been offered after a separate crash in October that killed 17 pilgrims near Salama.

“It’s not true. We have a problem, and the problem is only one. We need to have a dual carriageway between Mombasa and Nairobi,” he said, criticising what he described as a pattern of government agencies, blaming each other rather than addressing the underlying infrastructure gap.

By Joan Kinuthia