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In size, it has no rival. In beauty, only a few can compare. The mega housing estate boasts of some of the most enchantingly designed houses built by National Social Security Fund (NSSF).
The estate has a total of 4774 units, nursery and primary schools, community and shopping centres. The housing units consist of semi-detached three bedroom maisonettes and apartments.
Nyayo Embakasi, apart from the masterpiece in designs and architecture, boasts of beautiful well paved road networks. The roads within the estate are linked together, making it accessible for vehicular movement and has no single pothole.
The estate is arguably the cleanest in Kenya as not even a piece of paper or polythene can be spotted on the lawns, roads and open grounds. All these features make the estate a notch above other residential areas, even the leafy suburb of the capital city.
Since October 2011, Nyayo Estate Embakasi has continually been recognized for best practice and cleanliness despite perennial water rationing. A consultative forum held by the Community Development Network (CDN) rated the estate as having best practice in ensuring a clean environment through garbage and litter management, tree planting and well-maintained gardens.
Last year in May, controversial blogger Robert Alai was elected by a landslide to the helm of Nyayo Estate Residents Association (NERA) as the chairman.
As a known spokesperson for the voiceless, Alai's election wasn't a shocker to anyone as the estate's 25,000 residents overwhelmingly voted for him. Before being voted in, Alai had over the years been pushing the estate management to cater for the welfare of the residents.
In Africa, Nyayo Embakasi is the second largest housing estate, following Nigeria's Gwarinpa Estate which has 5,700 houses. Although Gwarinpa has 1000 houses more than Nyayo, the estate is a chaotic commercial centre of all sorts of business activities being run from private houses.
Every front porch has a grocery shop and nearly all backyards boast of a pubs. Greedy landlords have even converted balconies and garages into rooms which they rent out to students.
Gwarinpa is so chaotic that during peak hours, police have to be assigned to help ease traffic congestion in the estate.
There are no dark nights in Nyayo Embakasi. All through the estates, street lights line up the roads at fifteen metre intervals. Security in the estate is tighter than the Office of the President.
According the estates by laws, any resident who wishes to move out any goods from the estate must acquire a goods movement form from the estate management office. The office then verifies ones identity against the details in their database to avoid impersonation and where there is a discrepancy, they decline to release such goods as a security measure.
Each court has three security guards and strangers aren't allowed to walk in and out of any of the courts. Home owners also pay a small service charge that is used to pay firms to handle cleaning and gardening, garbage collection, security services and repairs and maintenance of common area fixtures and fittings, payment of power consumption for the common electricity facilities that include the streetlights, perimeter security lights, court gate and staircase lights and running the pumps, repairs and maintenance of the water distribution network (includes repairs and maintenance of the pumps, the water distribution piping network) and the common area water points that are used in watering the lawns, flowerbeds and cleaning the staircases.
When a resident dismisses a house-help due to theft, it is encouraged that information be passed on to security so that such house-helps can be barred from further accessing the court or the estate.
