A vision of a cleaner city with leaner garbage level

By Boniface Ongeri

Nairobi City Council initially planned to close the Dandora dumpsite by the end of this year. However, it has been rescheduled to 2017.

The Nairobi City Council has identified landfills further east of Dandora, in Ruai, to manage solid waste.

When it was commissioned in the 1970s the dump there were controlled settlements in Dandora. However, population explosion has led to the encroachment on all available land.

There is mounting pressure from residents and environmentalists keen to have the dump relocated.

The Government is in the process of recruiting private investors to decommission the dumpsite, build sanitary landfills in Ruai and manage garbage collection zones in the city, in line with its Vision 2030.

The dangers associated with the dump are documented in a 2007 UN report, and include respiratory illnesses.

The move to relocate the dumpsite to Ruai has not been received well by the residents.

Some say the dumpsite will overwhelm them, considering they already host the city’s sewerage plant.

Antony Kimani reflected on the impending decommissioning of the dumpsite by 2017.

He concurred that the dumpsite is an eyesore because it had been encroached by human settlement. But Kimani also acknowledged the dump had made some men very rich.

I spotted some salted macadamia nuts and a bar of chocolate in the dump and remembered that I would have dived in a decade ago.

Now that I am a grown man, I can only stare and remember long-gone days when such items would have ended on the plate of goodies from the dump.