The 3,500-member strong group that has been cleaning the streets of Nairobi will now be morphed into a public company to exclusively focus on city’s garbage collection, City Hall now says.
Governor Johnson Sakaja said his administration will establish the Green Nairobi company to institutionalise city cleaning as a way of dealing with the garbage menace in the county.
Without giving much details on the operation of the proposed company and the stage of its formation, Sakaja said the outfit will take over the cleaning drive being carried out by the group named Green Army.
But Kileleshwa MCA Robert Alai
dismissed the governor’s intention
of incorporating a public company
to manage garbage collection and
cleaning in the city as another roadside declaration that does not have
legal anchorage and won’t take off.
Alai told the Star the fate of the decision would be like the Dishi na County project that was not discussed in the county assembly, hence lacks legal framework and therefore, only operational at the whims of the occupant of the City Hall.
“What Sakaja is doing is bad because he is ignoring county assembly in all these. He has not appraised us on his new initiative of establishing the so-called green company. This is how he mishandled the Dishi na County thing,” he said.
Alai said the proposed company must be well thought out with robust public participation to ensure it serves the interest of the public.
“He must learn to work with the county assembly as a way of checks and balances,” he said.
In particular, Alai is concerned that the Sakaja administration was dishing out too many crucial service provision roles to private entities, especially in health.
“I’m deeply concerned that Sakaja is dishing out too many crucial services on contract to private sector, especially in health,” he said.
“Right now, yellow fever vaccine is in the hands of private sector and there is a reason why some of these crucial services are often retained in the hands of government institutions for oversight and quality control. It is also to safeguard the public from private sector greed.”
Sakaja announced the creation of
the entity on Sunday when he presided over the end of the group’s
CBD cleaning drive and announced
that the lot will now shift focus to
the estates and will clean them one
by one.
