Floods related deaths show Government inertia

Floods and resultant deaths, injuries, displacement, and destruction of property are here with us once again. Within just this month alone, eleven people have died, nine of them school children aged between six and 13 years. They were swept away by floods in Nyaburu Village in Central Gwassi last Wednesday.

The two adults died in an incident that was caused by flooding of River Athi. Several others have been injured and hundreds are already rendered homeless. And the rains and floods did not come out of the blue catching the Government by surprise.

The Meteorological Department had last month warned that some counties, which would record heavy rains, were likely to witness flash flooding and isolated cases of mudslides and landslides.

Slightly heavy rains were predicted in Western, Nyanza, and Rift Valley beginning mid last month.

All the Government did was to advise people living near riverbanks or flood-prone areas to move to higher grounds to save their lives. The question that comes to mind is what is the work of the Kenya National Disaster Operation Centre (NDOC), which was established in 1998 to deal with management and co-ordination of disaster responses?

To tell Kenyans to move from their houses to safer areas is like adding salt to their wounds of poverty and reminding them that they have actually no other place of their own to call home, other than the places they are now being told to abandon.

Interestingly, the stated mission of NDOC is to monitor, co-ordinate, and mobilise national resources to respond to disasters, and not for the Government to tell people to move from their homes and leave behind sources of their livelihoods.

NDOC is supposed to be constantly on stand by with a reporting centre running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Interesting enough, NDOC was created in response to the El Nino rains to co-ordinate disaster management and response operations.

And instructing the Provincial Administration to take steps to control human settlement in disaster prone areas to avoid loss of lives and property is tantamount to putting a carriage before a horse.

The Provincial Administration were ordered to identify and control settlement on landslide prone areas, but the question that begs is whether the Government would be willing to provide the victims with permanent and fertile land away from disaster that they will call home. Can this happen when millions of Kenyans are landless and living in shanties at the edges of multi-million-shilling mansions?

People are already settled wherever they are and where would a Kenyan peasant get alternative land if the land to settle IDPs has been a problem?

Kenyans live where they do because they have nowhere else to call home.

The Government’s lack of seriousness and commitment can be cited in the annual flooding in Budalangi and what it sold as a permanent solution to the challenges of flooding.

After years of dragging its feet, the Government raised the dykes and expanded them so that they could contain the water and withstand the pressure that came with the swelling of River Nzoia last year. Just two months later over 4,500 people in Bunyala District were displaced by floodwaters when River Nzoia burst its banks.

The events in Budalang’i speak volumes of the Government’s inertia and inability to permanently deal with these problems compounded by poor workmanship and lack of foresight. Such situations compound the problems because the flooding not only kills, injure and displace people, but it also destroys crops and could lead to food insecurity. There is also the danger of waterborne and other diseases that come with flooding, and the disruption of economic activities that push poor Kenyans into more poverty.

The astonishing thing is that the Government just waits for disaster to happen, shuffle its feet, complains that it does not have enough money, equipment, and personnel, and immediately calls for other agencies like the Red Cross to help. When the disaster passes, the Government again rests on its laurels waiting for another disaster to happen.