Solid Waste Management in Nairobi City:

Abstract

The continual influx of people from rural areas and small towns to Nairobi has more than doubled the population of the city in the last 10 years. Population growth has overwhelmed the city's ability to deliver necessary social services. Despite service fees intended to keep the city clean and provide residents with social services. such services are rarely delivered. Once known as "The Green City in the Sun," Nairobi has lost its beauty to heaps of uncollected garbage. Researchers at the University of Nairobi, Department of Community Health conducted .l solid waste management assessment in 1994. A total of 662 Nairobi residents were interviewed to establish the factors underlying poor solid waste management. The findings indicate that waste is not collected 60 percent of the time. Furthermore, 91 percent of the respondents were not provided with Nairobi City Council (NCC) waste storage receptacles md resorted to indiscriminate dumping. At present, the environmental conditions are deplorable, and the residents are dissatisfied with the quality of NCC's social services, particularly solid waste management. . Results of the study suggest that lack of skilled and technical human resources, poor management of finances and resources, and laxity among employees are the major contrib¬uring factors. Also. residents show little concern for the cleanliness of their city and tend to believe that the N CC has sole responsibility for solid waste management. Over 50 percent of .he study'S participants proposed a participatory approach as a sustainable solution to the problem. Such an approach would make NCe accountable to the public for its use of taxpayers' money and service fees; if accountability is not achieved, the public would be allowed to take the necessary legal action.