• Families recounted the 'ambushed raids' by the county law enforcement, exposing their belongings and household item to injury and destruction.
• Sonko asserted that the affected families rejected compensation, daring them to 'go to court.'
Image: EZEKIEL AMINGA'
Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko yesterday maintained that the ongoing evictions on Pangani estate are unstoppable even as drama and frustrations marked the second day of the exercise.
Confronted by social media users appalled by the ostensibly inhumane exercise that left many families in cold at night, Sonko asserted that they must make room for the affordable housing project, which is part of the Big Four Agenda.
He said the evictees had rejected compensation and were to blame for their own predicament.
"Take your nonsense to hell," Sonko tweeted, daring the aggrieved to go to court.
"Those not paid are the ones who refused to take the money, and we are not going to pay them... We shall not allow development plans to be politicised."
The Star witnessed a cat-and-mouse chase on the estate as mean-looking city askaris stormed the houses and threw out household items and eject the tenants, most of them women, while bulldozers descended on the houses.
The evictions started on Monday night. Some tenants acknowledged having been given verbal notice to vacate by July 3 but decried the arbitrary ambush.
While most of the women tenants were in tears and shock, others desperately expressed their plea to be allowed to move their items — mainly kitchenware. Their pleas fell on deaf ears.
Emily Wangare, a mother of four who appeared to be in her 50s, told the Star the bulldozers arrived yesterday at 5am and started pulling down the buildings.
"We were still asleep when they came. The glass windows that they shattered fell on my two children, injuring them," she said.
Some of her belongings were gathered at the front of her veranda and the askaris had stopped her and her elder daughter from taking them because a bulldozer was wrecking the house.
"This is very unfair. We knew the eviction and destruction of the houses had started yesterday [Tuesday], but it should be done in a humane way. There is not an alternative offered to us, yet my family has lived here for over 30 years," a visibly deflated and teary Wangare claimed as she damned Sonko and President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Asked whether she knew about the compensation by the city administration, Wangare acknowledged that she knew about it but could not decide whether to accept the money as her husband was sick and hospitalised at the time.
"My husband and I were involved in an accident and he was severely injured — right now he is using scratches. I could not make that decision as he was away at the time," she said, adding that they have been paying Sh10,000 for their two-bedroom house.
Almost similar tales were echoed by Celina Wanjeri, a mother of five, who said she barely struggled to prepare her kids for school yesterday after the ambush.
"When they came, it was a race against time trying to save my items. I was just throwing everything out... Where would I get time to prepapre breakfast and have kids ready for school?" she said.
"This is inhumane and God will punish them [Sonko and his askaris]."
Catherine Njeri lived in a sublet two-bedroom unit, which she co-rented with two other families. She was paying Sh5,000 a month. Due to the early morning raids, she now has her three kids housed by a friend in Mlango Kubwa area as she tried to salvage what remained of her belongings.
A resigned Njeri prides herself as a 'hustler' who hawks fruits at Ngara's Fig tree market. She said the arbitrary raids were insensitive but "we just have to smart from it and build our lives again."