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Dare ban polythene bags and face the mother of all street protests

Counties
 How will bread, soda or milk keep fresh in the shops? What will we wrap sukuma wiki in? How will Sh10 paraffin be carried in the slums?

It is now official: Our government has finally gone bonkers. Methinks it is run by sadomasochists who need industrial action much like a junkie craves his nicotine or heroin fix.

The bureaucrats never seem to learn from the teachers' strike that paralysed learning or the 100-day doctors' withdrawal of labour that has seen us legalise and regularize the stay of "madaktari kutoka Tanzania" who are known to cure anything and everything. And we are not just speaking Loliondo here!

How can sirkal ban polythene bags and all manner of plastics in an election year, or any other year for that matter? Didn't they see that even soft-spoken Emilio Kibaki quickly withdrew his hands from the searing heat of burning nylon when he tried to burn a few plastics?

Manufacturers are up in arms despite government functionaries mumbling stuff about grace period, environmental cost savings and tax concessions.

The majority of Asian manufacturers have petitioned the temple heads to demand a Makonde-style march on State House to demand recognition as the 44th tribe of this great republic.

The Asian Nation is still smarting over the takeover of their shopfronts by hawkers in the CBD and a proliferation of "exhibition stalls" selling mobile phones; they were not consulted before their Chinese rivals were handed the SGR construction despite the original Uganda Railway having been laid by their ancestors in between dodging Tsavo lionesses that had developed a taste for coolies.

They are the majority of employers in the manufacturing sector and can mobilise thousands of soon-to-be-unemployed staff to shut down all factories across all 47 counties.

Sex workers and youth are also the warpath since they haven't been told what form "alternative packaging material" condom manufacturers will use.

What are they expected to use to stem opportunistic STDs and other life-snuffing infections since the Ministry of Health has not indicated how raging testosterone hormones shall be contained in the intervening period?

There is talk that the People's Republic of China is planning to send an official protest note to the Government of Kenya, seeing as most of China's exports to Kenya are plastic-based.

If Kenya does not recant the plastics ban decision, China reserves the right to demand immediate repayment of all loans she has extended to Kenya and also, Jubilee MPs will no longer get visas to go and study how the China Communist Party manages to annihilate political party pluralism and successfully juggle the needs of two billion citizens.

Street boys are also coming together this Friday to demand alternative employment since they are the ones that walk the length and breadth of the city collecting used plastics and polythene bags they sell per-kilo to factories in Industrial Area.

They are also demanding affordable, easy-to-carry, alternative containers to store the glue they sniff to keep away the odious fumes from the rubbish heaps around our city estates and Dandora refuse dump.

Scrap metal dealers also want to be enjoined in discussions as to what they shall employ their long-suffering Bedford J6 lorries if there will be no more discarded plastics to ferry.

It is unconscionable that in a cattle rustling and meat-eating nation, butchers should be so disenfranchised that they can no longer wrap meat in newspapers or polythene bags.

How will bread, soda or milk keep fresh in the shops? What will we wrap sukuma wiki in? How will Sh10 paraffin be carried in the slums?

How will cigarettes, sweets and mandazi be wrapped? How will mourners be given water at funerals and political rallies hygienically if not in plastic bottles? What material will our new-generation identity cards and bank debit/credit cards be made of?

Handcart water vendors wonder how they will ferry water, while chang'aa brewers are at sea whether to start using corrosive metallic drums. Even new car dealers are a worried lot since seat covers come plastic-wrapped to distinguish shiny showroom jalopies from their mitumba cousin versions.

Let Environment ministry mandarins be warned they will pay dearly for the gloom and despair they want to visit on a Working Nation. In fact, online warriors, KOT (Kenyans on twitter) should start a campaign against this wanton economic sabotage of the Jubilee administration's efforts at economic empowerment before sirkal finds itself with the mother of all strikes.

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