Vandals frustrate garbage disposal in Malindi town

Malindi, Friday June 9, 2023,

KNA by Lucy Karanja/Emmanuel Masha

An environmental pollution catastrophe is looming in the tourist resort town of Malindi in Kilifi County following the destruction by vandals of chambers installed to temporarily hold the solid waste.

Kilifi County Government officials’ efforts to keep the town clean have been frustrated by the vandals, who scavenge for scrap metal, and residents who burn down plastic holding grounds in designated waste disposal sites.

The County Executive Committee Member (CECM) for Water, Environment and Blue Economy Omar Said revealed that most designated waste chambers were not functioning after miscreants destroyed all metallic waste chambers.

Mr Said said plastic waste chambers had not been spared either as some residents had resorted to burning the waste, thus destroying the chambers.

Consequently, Mr Said announced that his department had embarked on an awareness campaign to educate residents on proper waste management for a clean environment before embarking on arresting violators of the Environment Act.

 “When we are through with the sensitisation campaign, we will embark on law enforcement where we will arrest violators who will pay fines to earn revenue for the county,” he said Wednesday during a clean-up exercise in parts of the town.

At the same time, the County Government, is working in collaboration with various stakeholders among them World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to create employment opportunities for local youths through waste recycling programmes involving plastics.

"There is value in plastic waste,” said Ms Asmah Awadhi, WWF’s Coastal Kenya Programme Manager, who added that the organisation had worked with informal waste managers in Mombasa where it emerged that hundreds of youths were earning cash from recycling of plastics.

“We have worked in Mombasa with informal waste managers and trained them on collecting segregated plastic so that they can sell them to crashers to enable recycling. There are other ongoing programmes in coast which are good for converting plastic to products which are usable," she said.

"Plastic pollution is a big concern in Kenya especially in the coast where we have a marine environment,” she said adding, “Kenya produces about one million tonnes of waste which ends up in our seas.”

The chairman of the Water and Environment committee at the Kilifi County Assembly, Mr Karisa Ngirani said that the assembly had passed the solid waste management bill that will regulate waste disposal in the County.

He said the new law would also encourage recycling of waste materials to create other useful products as a way of creating employment and earning revenue for the county, and urged the County Executive to operationalise it.

“ We have passed the Solid Waste Management bill that stipulates designated places for waste collection and we are waiting for the Executive to operationalise the bill so that we start benefiting from it so that we can recycle wastes and earn from it,” he said.

Ms Zamzam Ali, the Chief Officer for for Devolution Civic Education and Public Participation said there was need for awareness creation so that residents appreciate the importance of a clean environment.

Catharine Mwikali who is the chair for Malindi Progressive Association, said her organisation had organised monthly clean-up exercises in the town that had created job opportunities for young people and women.

Courtesy ; K. N. A