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Nairobi county demolishes illegal structures in Lavington

August 2nd, 2018 1 min read

By COLLINS OMULO

It was chaos and running battles as Nairobi County enforcement officers demolished illegal structures in Lavington, Dagoretti North on Thursday.

A total of 120 traders operating illegal structures were arrested while more than 100 structures were demolished in the sting operation by the enforcement unit.

The director of the enforcement unit Peter Mbaya said that the crackdown was part of an ongoing operation by the county government to rid the capital city of illegal structures across all the 17 sub-counties.

“We are dealing with the small structures. We wanted to arrest as many as possible and take them to court to act as a deterrent to others. We were enforcing all the illegalities. There were some who were dumping wastes, some cooking by the roadside while others were hawking,” said Mr Mbaya.

ILLEGAL STRUCTURES

He said that the operations would go on until Nairobi is devoid of the illegal structures.

He added that Fedha estate, Kasarani, Roysambu and Dagoretti North had the highest number of unwanted structures.

“In Fedha estate alone we demolished like 1, 200 structures. In Kasarani, 250 structures and up today we have demolished over 9, 000 structures,” he said.

On the confrontation between his officers and the traders, Mr Mbaya said that was a normal occurrence as the traders always resist arrest knowing too well that they do not have licences to operate in the said areas.

“Anything we do we always give notices but there are some people do not need notices because they come from nowhere and start selling their wares and so when we get there we just arrest them,” he said.