Workers face challenges like low pay, poor working and living conditions

Naivasha Flower Firm Workers Struggle to Make ends Meet Despite Industry Boom

NAIVASHA, KENYA: It is a chilly morning as Janet Njeri joins a group of men and women dressed in worn-out heavy sweaters leaving their mud-walled houses in the sprawling Karagita slum heading towards South Lake Road in Naivasha town.

Like many mothers employed in flower farms dotting the shores of Lake Naivasha, Njeri leaves behind her five-year-old child in the hands of aged women in filthy rooms that have been turned into day care centres. She treks for a short distance along a dirt road to a makeshift bus stop where they all queue waiting for old, smoking and creaking buses that ferry them into flower farms.