Kenya market clean-up: Workers bag 6,000 rats, remove tonnes of garbage and human waste
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Workers at Kenya’s main market killed 6,000 rats, trucked away 680 metric tonnes of garbage and sucked 64 tonnes of human waste out of latrines over three days in the first major clean-up of the market in 30 years, an official said yesterday.
The Wakulima Market, which supplies fresh food to most of Nairobi’s three million residents, was a public health hazard, with rubbish two metres (seven feet) deep in some places, said local government minister Musikari Kombo.
“Was I shocked? I was traumatised by the rot,” Kombo told the Associated Press. “We were lucky to be spared a major outbreak of disease.”
City council workers used 160,000 litres (42,269 gallons) of water in the clean-up operation, Kombo said, adding that some traders who operated at the market for years were surprised to see that a tarmac existed below the garbage.
Kombo, who ordered the closure of the market for cleaning last week, said 270 workers were involved in the operation.
Hundreds of traders had marched to his office Monday to protest the closure of the market that was described yesterday by Kenya’s oldest independent newspaper The Standard as “easily one of the dirtiest markets in the world”.
News on the extent of the filth at the market sparked public calls for members of the City Council of Nairobi to resign.
“It is singularly disheartening that the biggest retail market in the country could suffer from the kind of neglect that has recently been exposed at Wakulima,” the newspaper said in an editorial. “If there was a good reason for the mayor and the entire council to resign, this is it.”
The council needs a major overhaul to end years of mismanagement, endemic corruption, fraud, embezzlement, misuse and waste of resources and outright abuse of office, said an investigative report presented to Kombo last August.
The Kenyan government has commissioned 15 probe committees, task forces, special committees, independent consultants and others to study problems facing the council, but no significant action has been taken to rectify the situation, the report said.
The council loses as much as six billion shillings (US$77 million, euro58 million) a year as a result of corruption and mismanagement in its ranks, Kombo said late last year.
“The rats and the filth at the market reflect the rot of mismanagement within the city council,” said state minister for public service William Ole Ntimama, who once held a Cabinet position that supervised the council.
