Cartels cash in on crooked sand harvesting deals as residents despair

**Residents of Karura village in Mbeere South constituency remove sand from a lorry that they had blocked on October 3, 2015, to protest child labour in sand quarries. [PHOTO/JOSEPH MUCHIRI/STANDARD]**

The long-held view of sand as a lifeline for water-starved Ukambani residents is changing in many areas and taking the unpleasant shape of a curse, thanks to runaway greed fanned by junior administrative authorities, county officials, the police, brokers and politicians.

This God-given treasure that floods small and large river beds in the lower eastern Kenya region today enriches only a few. Blood, and not life-sustaining water, is what flows where the commodity has been scooped dry leaving barren rocks.

Besides blood and death, the fabled white gold is leaving in its wake rich deposits of drugs that destroy the lives of youngsters who ought to be in school.

The little money that trickles down after rich middlemen have pocketed their share goes back to the nabobs who peddle drugs to the impressionable youths, turning them into zombies and cheap hirelings for crime. Delinquency blossoms.

Because they are not strong enough to load sand onto lorries to put money into their pockets, women resort to using their bodies and flood the area with unwanted babies fathered by the drug-soaked lads.

The incidence of HIV/Aids is up due to careless sex. It is a vicious cycle as the white gold breeds poverty rather than wealth for the locals, under the very nose of the authorities.

Left in the lurch with little else to do, communities arm themselves in a desperate bid to fight the menace that is wreaking havoc on their children’s future. Perhaps nowhere else is this problem more pronounced than in Kasikeu Division of Kilome County, about nine kilometres off Sultan Hamud on the Nairobi/Mombasa highway.

The name Kasikeu may not strike a chord with most Kenyans, but it has been a scene of some violence, say leaders. “A bloody confrontation in December 2012 pitting sand harvesters against folks defending the commodity on Mwangini River caused two deaths and several injuries without a mention in the press,” laments the chairman of Kasikeu Water Resource Users Association, Mr Raphael Kimundi. Kimundi claims that the police covered up the killings as nobody was charged in court in spite of some arrests being made.

“The impunity has since spawned more killings as the police, county and administrative authorities look the other way after getting their share of proceeds from illegal sand harvesting,” rues Kimundi.

Mzee Kitome Mulwa, whose son Kimeu Kitone was one of the two killed, cries for justice four years since it happened.

“I was chased away like a thief when I went to report the death of my son at Sultan Hamud Police Station. They told me to go harvest the sand”. Fast forward: The matron of Mutweamboo Primary School, Ms Rose Mueni, was at her house on the school compound when armed thugs struck on the night of August 12, 2015, killing her.

The watchman, Mr Kimeu Mutevu, raised the alarm, but he was pursued by the thugs and killed across the fence on the compound of Kasikeu Girls’ Secondary School.

Puzzling about the two deaths that have left students in the two schools traumatised is the fact that arrests are yet to be made, even with rumours flying around that the killers were hired by sand harvesters acting at the behest of the slain matron’s enemies.

The headmaster of Mutweamboo Primary School John Mutuku says he suspects the watchman was not spared because he recognised some of the killers.

Kasikeu Girls’ Secondary School Principal Winfred Mwania says boarders at the school live in fear. “It is reassuring when suspects are arrested and charged in court after killings. Leaving them to go scot free is cultivating impunity and brewing fear,” says Mrs Mwania. Harvesting of sand also depletes waters in rivers. Where the school used to spend Sh14,000 per month pumping water from a shallow well in Kaluku River, it now uses double the amount to purchase it from a borehole, says the Principal.

Muleu says he has received death threats from people unhappy with his relentless crusade against sand harvesting.

Protector group

“I go about my work here armed for any eventualities,” he says, displaying a sword and a catapult. I spend a lot of time talking to affected boys to change. My efforts are beginning to bear fruits, albeit gradually.

Besides gangs for hire, groups for and against sand harvesting have turned into militia that engage in bloody fights, terrorising peaceful residents some of whom have abandoned their homes.

The police are not helping matters by taking sides with those who pay them. Makueni Senator Mutula Kilonzo Junior says the problem with sand harvesting in Makueni County revolves around a ban that cannot be enforced, thereby pushing the menace underground.

“That is the genesis of vigilante groups that evolve into dangerous criminal gangs if not checked,” he says. “What needs to be done is regulate the collection of sand because banning it only creates an illegality,” the senator says, adding that sand is a commodity that cannot be banned wholesale.

He adds that the pending sand Bill in Parliament contains an obnoxious proposal giving the County Government the mandate to collect the bulk of the proceeds at the expense of the people. “The County Assembly must re-look and review the offensive clauses to fully incorporate the public,” he says. He accuses county enforcement officers of colluding with lorry owners and the police to extort money and singles out police roadblocks at Salama, Malili and Kyumvi as the unofficial toll stations where sand money is collected from lorries.

“It is a chain that ropes in the police,” says the Makueni senator, adding that he has asked the Inspector General of Police to take action, but to no avail.

Fredrick Ouma, the Deputy County Commissioner for Mukaa Sub-county, where Kilome Division falls, blames the Makueni County enforcement officers for the sand woes in Kasikeu. “I have information that these officers collect money at night in unmarked Toyota Probox vehicles. They are brazen extortionists and the Governor ought to crack the whip,” says Mr Ouma.

On allegations that the police and his office are part of the problem Ouma says: “The police have their own commander and I cannot speak for them.

“But anybody imputing that I am embroiled in the sand business is driven by nothing but malice. Reducing me to the level of collecting money from lorries ferrying sand is callously nonsensical and insulting.

“It is stupid to think that I can stoop that low whereas I am capable of buying my own lorries to carry the sand. It would be more logical to claim that the Deputy County Commissioner owns sand collecting lorries”.

Mr Ouma warns sand harvesters to desist from criminal activities that have included murders. “Arrests have been made and security bolstered,” he says.

Mukaa Officer Commanding Police Division (OCPD) Muchiri Mbogo acknowledges complaints against his officers and promises stern action

“We have arrested many lorry drivers and fined their owners”, he says but falls short of satisfactorily explaining why the same lorries continue being used to ferry sand unhindered.

Governor Prof Kivutha Kibwana proved unreachable for comment but sources close to his office say a policy regulation governing sand harvesting is yet to be rolled out to prop the ban he has decreed minus the blessing of the County Assembly.