On environment, Nema has let Kenyans down

NAIROBI: Owino Uhuru village in Changamwe, Mombasa County, is a hurting village. The village's mud-walled houses sport rotten iron sheet roofs, abject poverty is evident everywhere but the most touching thing is that children, adults and even livestock, have skin ulcers and other ailments that are a result of exposure to heavy metal, specifically Lead.

Lead is a metal that finds its way into the body through inhalation, water and soil contamination. Lead weakens individuals by wearing down the calcium in the body, thus causing breathing problems, skin cancers, miscarriages, deformities, mental disabilities, lung and kidney complications as well as anaemia.

For several years, the residents of Owino Uhuru have been treating ailments they did not understand; neither did medical authorities offer much help other than treating the symptoms. Many women in the village have had multiple miscarriages and family life, from accounts by the victims, has been affected from loss of libido and poor health.

Kenya Metal Refineries, based in Changamwe, has been extracting Lead from old car batteries, exposing workers to harmful elements without providing protective clothing as the law demands of such companies.

Compounding matters even further, the company has been dumping toxic waste at a public dump site, contrary to environmental management regulations. In effect, this has led to soil and water contamination that has caused so much suffering to the residents of this poor village.

An expose by KTN's Jicho Pevu on the activities of the company raises fundamental questions on the role government institutions play in the protection of the environment and its citizens against harmful pollutants.

World Health Organisation rules stipulate that industries whose activities are potentially harmful must be situated at least 50km away from human habitation.

Further, prior to the commencement of operations, such industries must be subjected to environmental impact assessment before getting the green light to proceed. The rationale behind this is to protect the environment from degradation. How then, did Kenya Metal Refineries operate for so long without having met these requirements?

Jicho Pevu's investigations reveal the firm was not registered and those interviewed; Public Health officials and their counterparts from the National Environmental Management Authority (Nema), seemed content to blame each other for the lapse that has caused so much suffering.

However, the buck stops with Nema to make sure environmental degradation on such a magnitude does not occur. From uncollected garbage polluting the environment in areas such as Imara Daima estate and others, to the stinking garbage mounds in Kibera, to blocked drainages channelling water into houses, Kenyans feel let down by not only Nema, but other institutions and the government.

There may be genuine grievances that make it difficult for the environmental management authority to deliver, but unless these are voiced and addressed, the public has a every reason to assume it has failed in its mandate. The public needs answers as to how a firm can operate for years without meeting safety standards or being subjected to periodic inspection.