Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja has announced that the city county government has registered a limited company that will work on the cleaning of the country’s capital.
Speaking during a morning radio program on Radio 47 FM on Wednesday, February 5, 2025, the governor said that the garbage menace in the city will be handled by the newly formed Green Nairobi Company Limited which has been modeled like the Nairobi Water and Sewerage company, to collect all garbage in Nairobi.
Sakaja said that the company will ringfence money meant for cleaning services which will be deducted from the bills collected from water tarriffs.
Sakaja noted that the garbage problem is largely created by the individuals and community based organizations who collect garbage in estates and end up dumping the trash by the road sides.
“The county government has employed 3,500 youths in the Nairobi Green Army. 800 personnel are stationed in the Nairobi Central Business District while every ward has about 30 youths cleaning the areas. The problem arises when these people clean up and the garbage is collected for disposal, there are other people who charge residents in the estates a fee to collect their garbage and they end up dumping it on the roads. This will end when the Green Nairobi Limited takes up the collection of all garbage around Nairobi,” Sakaja said.
“We want everyone to know that the county government has an arm that collects garbage but the problem is that people want services but do not want to pay for them. We will work with the company to make sure that the issue of garbage collection is handled in a professional way. This company will have a budget which will be ringfences just like Nairobi Water operates autonomously so the vehicles will have fueled, the personnel are paid and operations are swift,” Sakaja added.
On the matter of water provision, Sakaja said that the first Northern Connector project which he proposed during the campaigns has been completed and has increased the supply of water in Nairobi and the county government has already secured donor funding for the construction of the second connector which is expected to further boost water supply in the city.
“Nairobi relies on Ndakaini Dam in Murang’a, Samumua dam in Nyandarua, Ruiru Dam in Kiambu and Kikuyu springs. These were developed to serve a lower population of about two million people in the year 2002 but today Nairobi has a day population of 7 million and 5 million during the night. Our water supply has been a problem but we have completed the Northern Connector Tunnel which has added 140 million litres of water daily,” Sakaja explained.
“We have been working with the national government and a unit called water police to curtail the problem of water theft and illegal water connections to further ensure that the frequency of water supply and the water pipping pressure is increased,” Sakaja noted.
“It is important to note that the Northern Connector phase one increased our water supply by 140 million litres and now I have secured 100 million dollars as donor funding from the Koreans to carry out the Northern Connector phase two and Maragwa dam 4 which is expected to increase our water supply by 220 million litres in the next two years,” he announced.
The governor said that his administration seeks to solve the water supply problem which will then solve the clean up services across the county. He noted that the clean ups being carried out in the CBD will be spread into the sub counties at the ward level where he noted that the residents will be incorporated into the exercises.