Residents of Migori have adopted a new technology of making concrete blocks for building and are gradually moving away from earthen bricks.
The new technology involves mixing murram soil with cement or using murram alone to make concrete blocks using a hydraform machine.
Jared Opiyo, a businessman in Migori town, makes his own concrete blocks and encourages residents to utilise the government-owned hydraform block maker machine to conserve the environment.
He said the machine can make between 1,200 and 1,500 blocks per day. He has a workforce of four people. Opiyo said the process is cheaper and faster than making the traditional bricks using hot kilns.
He said the machine produces blocks that are three times the size of one earth-baked brick.
The businessman said he used to make earth bricks for sale, a task that could take him seven days with a workforce of eight labourers to produce what he is producing in a day using the hydraform machine.
He said digging up the soil, mixing it, making bricks and finally baking them in hot kilns is a process that may take months to complete.
“I used to take three months to produce 3,000 earth bricks. With the block maker machine, I am able to produce 3,000 blocks in two days with a workforce of four,” Opiyo said during an interview.
Earth brick making process is tiresome, uneconomical and hazardous to human health and is an environmental pollutant.
The process of burning earth bricks, Opiyo said, requires tonnes of trees, a process that contributes to the depletion of forests.
“When I used to make earth bricks, out of 1,000 I could have 200 breakages. Some could not undergo the proper burning process, reducing another 100 bricks. At the end of the day, I could only account for 700 bricks that were ready for the market,” he said.
Opiyo said anybody can make earth bricks and the supply is so high that one has to sell a brick at Sh7 instead of between Sh12 to Sh15.
Those who have engaged in the making of earth bricks have created huge gullies on their farms due to the excavation of the soil needed for the process.
Opiyo said the gullies left behind on people’s farms pose a serious problem to food production, besides being death traps for humans and animals in case of accidental falls.
In this case, good alluvial soils are destroyed at the expense of farm products, as well as creating gaping water-logged ponds that become mosquito breeding grounds. The disadvantages are countless and needless to enlist, he said.
Many youths have ended up selling their pieces of land cheaply, thinking that the land is useless after destroying it by scooping earth for making bricks.
When a buyer buys such plots they reclaim them by refilling them with murram soils and then they build rental houses.
He said those who sell their land end up in depression when they see that what they perceived as valueless is benefitting the buyer through earning good money in rent.
“Let’s not destroy our forests and our arable lands in the name of making soil bricks. The government is trying hard to conserve our environment and we should be at the forefront in conserving it,” Opiyo said.
Migori county director for housing Linnet Nyakiti said any resident who wishes to use the machine is free to do so.
She encouraged residents to use the block maker machine to cut the costs of house construction.
The director said the government has ensured that it provides the necessary tools to make sure that Kenyans have affordable housing.
She explains that the Affordable Housing Programme (AHP) is a key pillar in the manifesto of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Big Four agenda to ensure all Kenyans have decent homes.
Edited by A.N
