Dandora Dumpsite, Complex Ecosystem of criminality and corruption
A recent academic study into conflict and crime in the waste sector in Nairobi and Mombasa conducted a household survey with residents of Nairobi on their experiences of crime relating to waste. 45.5% of respondents reported that they were aware of cartels operating in the waste-management sector.
Of these, 57.1% reported that they had themselves experienced crime and violence related to it. A report by GLobal Initiative on Transnational Organized Crime GI-TOC, read in part. Dandora dumpsite provides an example of how this ecosystem works where Criminal groups and corrupt actors are exploiting several different parts of Nairobi’s waste-management sector. Observed GI-TOC
According to the Global Initiative Transnational Crime, GI-TOC study, the complex ecosystem of criminality and corruption seen at the Dandora dumpsite is a reflection of the systemic vulnerabilities seen in the waste sector elsewhere in the world, but it has also been driven by local factors.
Nairobi, like other cities in Kenya, has seen rapid urban growth over the past 30 years with waste production growing massively, while political developments has paved the way for violent actors to enter the waste sector. The austerity measures of the 1990s – which resulted in the City Council (now the City County) retreated from service provision to the in formalization of the economy of Nairobi and the entry of private actors into urban service provision and increased competition for clients and control – competition that in some instances became violent.
In a report seen by the Insider Newspaper, Investigations have revealed to the GI-TOC, that there is an intricate web of relationships stretching between City Hall and Dandora dumpsite, connecting politicians, private waste companies and gangs where the waste-management tender process is used to influence members of the county assembly to ensure their support for leading political figures. Showed the report.
Global Initiative Transnational Organized Crime noted in their study that ‘It has been alleged that some assembly members make arrangements with the companies who win tenders in exchange for personal or campaign donations, and request that these companies hire certain young people to act as rubbish collectors.
These young people on often times tend to be the same men who have worked for the assembly members as ‘security’ during their election campaigns.’
Located in the middle of an informal settlement that is home to thousands of people 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.
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. Remarked GI-TOC
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 a distressing 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.
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.
According to the GI-TOC team, 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. According to one member of Gaza (a gang operating in Nairobi), 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. He told GI-TOC
The report adds that criminals also profit when the trucks come to the dumpsite to unload waste. About 100 trucks deposit waste at Dandora dumpsite every day, many owned by the approximately 150 private-sector waste operators. These operators are paid per truckload delivered to Dandora dumpsite, as measured at the weighbridge. Observed GI-TOC
A report by the auditor-general’s office in July 2018, revealed a number of stark irregularities in rubbish-processing contracts, including a case in which a private rubbish vehicle was weighed twice within four minutes for transporting rubbish from the city centre to Dandora – a 5.4-kilometre journey that can take up to an hour in Nairobi’s traffic jams. (Even clearing rubbish from the truck and cleaning it before the next trip takes longer than half an hour.) Another waste-management company was paid for working ‘29 hours a day’ based on odometer readings.
Speaking to GI-TOC, an official in the residents’ association in Buru Buru Estate, Nairobi said, ‘’They largely move waste from households to a central collection point, where it is collected by trucks belonging to either the county or private companies to go to the dumpsite. Essentially, these are extortion groups since they demand fees from residents for the job that is really undertaken by the county government.’’
The corrupt way in which waste is managed in Nairobi has exhausted the county of resources to provide waste-removal services and left neighbourhoods to be extorted by criminal service providers. According to the senior official in the Revenue Department, City Hall used to collect ‘millions of shillings in revenue in a month from the dumpsite about five years ago but now all it gets is KSh50 000 [US$460] per week’.
The fraud and lack of oversight that accompanies the criminalization of the waste-management sector is so austere that Nairobi does not even know how much rubbish it actually produces, and so how much needs to be collected. Some reports indicate Nairobi produces 2 500 tonnes of rubbish per day, while others show 3 500 tonnes.
The level of procurement irregularity such as double-invoicing, and the proliferation of illegal an unofficial dumpsite as transporters avoid Dandora due to its poor access, the dysfunctional weighbridge and the fines levied by gangs – makes exact estimates nearly impossible. Established GI-TOC
In 2014, the then area MP James Gakuya claimed that gangs were causing insecurity and argued that the Dandora dumpsite be relocated, forcing the High Court to direct the National Environmental Management Authority to undertake an audit of the dumpsite. But vested interests made it impossible for the dumpsite to be relocated.
Police oversight was subsequently withdrawn from the dumpsite, which has become a no-go area for police. ‘We used to guard the place until 2016, when we were inexplicably removed from the dumpsite without reason,’ says a police officer who was once deployed at the dumpsite. ‘Now it’s an insecure area. We can only walk through the area, but we cannot risk making any arrests.’
GI-TOC reported that the removal of the police presence has rendered the dumpsite insecure. Clashes often break out for control of rubbish, in most cases between youth from two neighbouring informal settlements, Dandora and Korogocho.
The lack of police intervention also makes the dumpsite an attractive location for storing contraband such as guns and drugs. It was established that firearms are hidden in waste transported to the area owing to its inability for physically check and lack of scanners at the toll station. Observed GI-TOC
The report went on to say that there have been allegations that gangs are allowed to deal guns at the dumpsite as long as they protect the interests of private waste-management companies allied to powerful people in the government.
Gangs and other groups have, in some cases, become wealthy through providing informal services or taxing residents for transport, waste removal and electricity and water provision services that the state has failed to provide. Nairobi is continuing to urbanize, but this expansion now comes at a time when waste management, an economy that is critical to the environmental and population health of the city –has become deeply criminalized.
In October 2013, a youth was shot dead and his body hacked apart, doused in fuel and torched when gangs clashed in Dandora over control of the dumpsite. Police from a nearby station – who reportedly are often less well-armed than the gangs themselves – merely watched from a distance, according to a researcher who had conducted interviews at the dumpsite.
That same month a gang member by the name Mulusia (alias ‘Daddy’) was stabbed to death in a turf war. During this clash, gang members exchanged fire for almost five hours as officers from the nearby Kinyago Police Station looked on, afraid of intervening in case they were robbed of their guns. Two people lost their lives in the turf war that followed. Read the GI-TOC report
In 2014, the then area MP James Gakuya claimed that gangs were causing insecurity and argued that the Dandora dumpsite be relocated, forcing the High Court to direct the National Environmental Management Authority to undertake an audit of the dumpsite. But vested interests have made it impossible for the dumpsite to be relocated. Noted GI-TOC
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