Dirt is Good. Garbage Busines in Nairobi, Child Labour and Extortion.
The Dandora dumpsite, a sprawling 30-acre area in the north-east suburbs of Nairobi, is the only designated dump for the thousands of tonnes of rubbish produced daily in the city.
Located in the middle of an informal settlement that is home to thousands of people, the dumpsite has long been acknowledged as a dysfunctional and highly dangerous part of Nairobi’s municipal infrastructure.
Dandora has also become a hub for criminal groups and corrupt figures who operate in the city’s rubbish-collection industry. The criminalization of Dandora follows both inter-national trends and local factors. Internationally, the waste sector is a prime target for organized crime.
In August 2020, INTERPOL reported an alarming global increase in the illegal trade of plastic waste since 2018 and pointed to the environmental threat posed by poor (and criminal) management of the world’s waste. Even rich countries with strong bureaucracies are struggling to keep the waste sector free of criminal penetration.
An independent review published in 2018 by the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs found that ‘industrial-scale organised waste crime has emerged as an increasing problem’ in recent years.
The waste-management sector is vulnerable to criminal exploitation because it can offer high profit margins at low risk of getting caught for involvement in illegal activities, particularly as the main regulatory agencies involved in the sector are generally not part of the criminal justice system.
Furthermore, attempts to regulate hazardous materials often create a breeding ground for cutting corners and exploiting legislative loopholes. The various stages of processing waste – from collection from businesses and houses to the transport of waste and management of the dumpsites themselves – all offer opportunities for criminal rent-seeking and territorial control, and for corruption in the management of municipal contracts awarded
to companies.
It is lucrative work. According to an official of the Kenyan Alliance of Resident Associations, about 900 000 households pay private collectors an average 500 Kenyan shillings (KSh), or US$4.60, per month to collect their rubbish.
Officials in the county government say that these private levies amount to an annual turnover of KSh5.4 billion (US$45 million). Criminal groups and corrupt figures have become
involved at several points in the waste-removal process.
In some neighbourhoods of Nairobi, house-to-house rubbish collection (and the profits of the additional fee) are controlled by criminal gangs, who use violence to ensure that their services are contracted and paid for.
In Kayole, in the eastern suburbs, each household pays rubbish collectors a KSh150 (US$1.35) fee. And it is said, if this is unpaid, gangs will pour raw sewage on your doorstep or rob your compound. If you insist on refusing their services, they send people to threaten you.
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