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City Hall to rope in street kids in garbage collection

By Collins Omulo September 16th, 2021 2 min read

City Hall is considering roping in the services of street families to collect garbage within Nairobi.

This is part of a wider plan which also includes setting up waste engineering plants in Kamukunji and Lang’ata within the country’s capital in a move to achieve sustainable waste management.

“In these sites, street families will be mobilized through Saccos so as to participate in garbage collection as a way of economically empowering them,” said City Hall.

According to Nairobi County Annual Development Plan for the financial year ending June 30, 2023, the project to set up the new landfill sites will commence in 2022.

The re-engineered dumpsites are aimed at methane gas collection intended for electricity generation where collected residual wastes will be turned into the gas that will be used to power electricity generating plants.

Nairobi generates 3,000 metric tonnes of waste in a day which mostly end up at Nairobi’s largest dumping site in Dandora.

The dumpsite, however, is reeling under the weight of excessive solid waste holding over 1.8 million tons of waste against an expected capacity of 500, 000 tons.

“The aspiration is to deliver a clean healthy city where garbage is collected and safely disposed of and the environment is green and alive, and free of man-made waste,” read in part the document.

Accordingly, a feasibility study that will recommend a resettlement action plan for households likely to be affected, as the two sites are near human settlements, will be undertaken

In 2018, City Hall said it had set aside Sh20 million to build two transfer stations- a point where you collect garbage and sort it out for what to reuse or throw away – to help in sorting out garbage collected in the county.

Last month, the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) said a plan to establish a waste regeneration firm in Ruai, Nairobi, to recycle garbage generated in the city is at an advanced stage.