Nairobi News

Nairobi gubernatorial aspirant Mike Sonko has been giving city residents a taste of what he is cooking.

He has from Monday this week unleashed his Sonko Rescue Team to clean up the filth in estates.

The clean-up, code named‘Operation Ngarisha Jiji’, has been targeting city estates and slums.

And strangely, it is working. Heaps of rotting, uncollected garbage are finally finding their way to the Dandora dumpsite and drainages are being unclogged.

Garbage collection has been the biggest headache for Governor Evans Kidero and one which he has been unable to cure for the last four years.

His rival Senator Sonko has in recent days demonstrated how he intends to deal with the problem; massive deployment of armies of youths and lorries that work round the clock to clear up the garbage.

Governor Kidero’s preffered method of relying on licensed garbage collectors to clean up the city has only led to City Hall losing control of waste management.

Former Environment Executive Evans Ondieki last year summed the garbage problem in the city by saying: “Garbage is dominated by cartels connected to top City Hall officials.”

Senator Sonko now claims that City Hall has been frustrating his cleanup campaign by arresting members of his team on grounds that they are not authorized garbage collectors.

“I would like to publicly admit that indeed it is true my team is conducting an operation dubbed “Operation Ngarisha JIJI” aimed at making sure all our estates and slums are cleaned up and restored back to their lost glory. However, we have never at any one time dumped garbage in any of the city estates or by road side. I have hereby attached evidence including the city county dumping receipts to prove that we adhere to the laws relating to collection and dumping of garbage, said Mr Sonko.

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NAIROBI COUNTY GOVERNMENT ORDERS ARREST OF MY TEAM AFTER EASTLEIGH CLEAN-UP EXERCISE. The Sonko Rescue has been involved in garbage collection in a number of city estates. Unfortunately, it has come to my attention that the Nairobi County Environment Enforcement team is headed to Eastleigh Section 1 to arrest my team terming them as unauthorised garbage collectors who are apparently collecting and disposing garbage on the road side instead of dumping at Dandora dump site. I am privy to information that the county government has instructed a team led by a Mr. Mwanza 0720550738. Mr. Mwanza is the Public Communications Officer who has been authorised to lead the operation. I would like to publicly admit that indeed it is true my team is conducting an operation dubbed "operation ngarisha JIJI" aimed at making sure all our estates and slums are cleaned up and restored back to their lost glory. However, we have never at any one time dumped garbage in any of the city estates or by road side. I have hereby attached evidence including the city county dumping receipts to prove that we adhere to the laws relating to collection and dumping of garbage. I wish to confirm that my team has been taking the collected garbage to the Dandora dump site using our trucks. Let us not politicize this noble idea aimed at improving the environment. Video evidence to follow shortly.

A post shared by Mike Sonko (@mike.sonko) on May 24, 2017 at 12:44am PDT

City Hall’s Public Communications Officer one Mr Mwanza has refuted the claims.

“There is nothing like that, and I don’t know what the senator wants to achieve by saying that,” he told Nairobi News in a phone interview on Wednesday.

Hours later, Governor Kidero was touring Eastleigh where he condemned organisations that are collecting garbage without authorisation from City Hall.