Mwaura said the sentiments expressed by Duale while appearing in Parliament on October 2 have been misinterpreted.
Duale had argued that those in the middle class are to blame and not informal settlements.
He said waste produced by informal settlements is limited due to their limited resources.
“The story in town is that informal settlements are polluting the Nairobi River.That is a fallacy. It's less than one per cent. They even don't have garbage. They have nothing to throw. What they eat is very little. The garbage comes from the middle class,” he said.
Duale has now come under a barrage of criticism, with social media users alleging that the CS’s statement suggested that people living in informal settlements ‘eat everything’.
“The comment by CS Duale has been blown out of proportion,” Mwaura said Wednesday in a post.
He clarified that the Duale implied that this group in the lower class can creatively reuse waste materials collected in their areas.
“What he meant is that Kenyans living in the informal settlements have mastered the art of recycling and reusing waste materials creatively,” he said.
“The govt encourages the middle class and all Kenyans to do the same,” he added.
Duale further stated that the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) had mapped out 145 industries, factories, slaughterhouses, and apartment complexes that discharge untreated waste directly into the Nairobi River.
President William Ruto recently launched the Nairobi River regeneration programme assuring that in two years the city river will be fully transformed.
Ruto said it is an indictment to have a dirty river in the headquarters of various environmental bodies.
“I want to promise you that the river we have in Nairobi in two years, will be different. Because we cannot have the headquarters of world environment, UNEP in Nairobi and have the dirty river that we have,” he said.
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