Dear Mr. President; you are our incumbent. Please command sanity now because even the state house is in Nairobi City!

Nairobi - an urban agglomeration with a population of about 4 million people is back to the old days when streets in Nairobi were breading grounds for flies and hiding dens for streets families. The presence of the stinking waste in the city center is now causing untold suffering to residents particularly owners of eateries and residents.

The sight of raw sewerage has become common with sewer lines leaking ostensibly as a result of heavy rains. Nairobi currently has no hygienic means of disposing of excreta and this poses a great challenge to the city governor on the management and disposal of sewage.  Human wastes are exposed on the streets early in the morning and garbage collection due to hawker menace in the CBD is zero.

Dandora dumpsite is no longer accessible due to poor roads and cartels, which have been demanding money from private garbage collection firms. According the governor, Nairobi generates about 2,400 tons of solid waste per day, which City Hall is unable to cope with. The City Hall need to come up with a plan to ease garbage collection and need to divide the city into zones and award tender to top-notch companies to do the job.

Residents of some city estates are worried over broken sewer lines and unchecked dumping in rivers. The sight of raw sewerage has become common with sewer lines leaking ostensibly as a result of heavy rains which experts are attributing weather phenomenon. Raw sewer is a common feature flowing into houses and shops making Nairobi life very unbearable.

There are no efforts whatsoever by City Hall to unclog the drainage system. No strategy yet to map out flooding hotspots so as clear waterways and other channels. Waste disposal systems in the rapidly growing peri-urban areas are almost non-existent. The problem of sewer systems and poor garbage management due to poor urban planning is a volcano that is on the verge of eruption.

 

Dr. Njenga, Solomon Ph.D

Dean - School of Governance, Peace and Security

Africa Nazarene University, Kenya

DISCLAIMER: These are my own views and NOT of the Institution I work for