The Nairobi City County has revealed its plans to phase out private garbage collectors, aiming to centralise and streamline waste management within the city.
Acting county secretary and chief officer in charge of urban development and planning Patrick Analo noted that the initiative is part of a broader effort to improve efficiency, accountability and cleanliness within the city.
Analo said 30 per cent of solid waste within the 17 subcounties is currently collected by private waste collectors.
“In our next financial budget we are rolling out a programme where we fully, almost 100 per cent, collect the garbage,” he said.
"By taking full control of waste management, we aim to ensure consistent and reliable garbage collection services for all residents,” he said.
The plan, he noted, will go a long way in ensuring there is adequate supply of waste at the Dandora dumpsite which the county plans put up a solid-to-waste energy power plant.
The county government advertised the tender to build the waste energy processing plant at the site where China National Electric Engineering Company was picked.
A Nairobi court recently threw out a case by a petitioner which sought to challenge the plan.
The elimination of private garbage collectors is seen as a bold step towards achieving a cleaner, healthier and more organised Nairobi.
Speaking in a TV interview last month, Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja defended the move noting that the private collectors were to blame for the menace in the city.
He said some of them would collect payments based on the weight of the garbage disposed per day, which would be hiked in their favour.
Analo at the same time attributed the current water and sewerage problem within the city to failure by the previous governments to implement the Nairobi growth strategy.
"Successive governments from 1963 did not do what was needed to be done to put us to where we are today," he said.
He cited a 1976 Nairobi area metropolitan growth strategy which was to help address such challenges.
He, however, noted that there are plans in place to address it through the urban renewal programme.
At the same time, he said there was need to address the issue of access to housing especially by those living in informal settlements in the city.
"If we continue to allow more people to living in squalor conditions then we are not fixing the problem that we face as a city," he said.
