Water board defends Kariobangi evictions

A water agency yesterday defended the eviction of tenants from Kariobangi sewage slum that left over 5,000 people homeless even as Nairobi County Woman Rep Esther Passaris termed the action cruel and inhuman. 

Athi Water Services Board chief executive  Mwangi Thuita  yesterday said tenants had been engaged  in the five year period  since  rehabilitation work of the waste treatment started.

Thuita said that while he sympathised with the victims, the demolition  had to proceed because the project had to be commissioned.

The residents of  Kariobangi sewage slum estate in Kariobangi North woke up to roaring bulldozers on Monday morning flattening their structures. The demolition of the structures was carried out by the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company in a bid to reclaim the land where more than 5,000 families had been living since 2008.

This comes after the expiry of a notice to vacate the land said to have been grabbed from Dandora Estate Waste Sewerage Treatment Plant in Ruai.

However, a number of the affected residents said they were not given any written notice, claiming that the area administrator and police boss only gave them a verbal notice on Sunday to move out by the end of the day.