NAIROBI LETTER:Local councils fail to honour promises to relocate and compensate traders, writes JODY CLARKE
FOR 18 years, Samuel Ngoroge sold fruit and vegetables at the bottom of the hill I’ve called home for just six months.
Sat awkwardly at the edge of a busy roundabout, he and about 50 others made a brisk trade selling everything from groceries to DVDs, along a thin strip that also included a hair salon and bar.
Then the city council came one Wednesday afternoon last month and bulldozed it all.
“They gave us 48 hours’ notice, but came before that,” says Ngoroge, looking over the crushed stone and wilting iron bars not collected by the two trucks the council brought with them.
“They first told us they would demolish the place a year ago, but promised to compensate and relocate us. Of course they haven’t. They are twisting us as hard as they can.”
For myself and the other residents of Kileleshwa, a leafy suburb of Nairobi that starts at the city’s arboretum and runs uphill through a maze of middle-class housing estates, it’s a minor inconvenience.
One less place to stop off at for milk and vegetables when walking back from Westlands, the Kenyan capital’s biggest expat hangout.
But for people like Ngoroge, it’s going to prove a life-changing experience.
He used to take in 5,000-6000Ksh a day, enough to pay his children’s school fees of 30,000Ksh a term. Now he doesn’t know where he’ll find the money to send them anymore.
His is not an unusual tale in Kenya. Small-scale trading, such as hawkers and roadside stalls, contribute about 18 per cent of Kenya’s gross domestic product and employ 77 per cent of the country’s urban workforce, according to a new campaign launched by Oxfam.
Yet local councils do not provide basic services and harass and bribe traders, a new survey by the NGO has found.
“Small traders have become gardens for local authorities to harvest money. Their business sheds are demolished without notice and goods confiscated and never returned,” according to Samuel Waweru, chairman of Wainanchi Hawkers and Traders Association.
A survey conducted by the campaign spoke to 700 traders in the Korogocho, Mukuru and Kibera districts of Nairobi, mostly trading on pavements and roadsides.
Nearly one in five traders (18 per cent) said they have experienced some form of harassment or violence from city council officials and askaris (security guards), while 13 per cent have at some point been evicted by the council. Some 11 per cent have had goods confiscated, with half of the goods never returned.
In Ngoroge’s case, the council say they need to expand the road and ease congestion, a cause that most of Nairobi residents would support. Just getting from the airport to the city centre, a distance of 15km, can take two hours during rush hour.
They also say they do provide compensation, when traders provide deeds to their property. But in Kenya, where title to land is difficult to establish because of a crossover of claims from private individuals and semi-state companies, this is easier said than done.
“Normally the council will come up with many reasons not to give compensation. They’ll say that traders have broken some bylaw or other, like trading without a licence or loitering,” says Patricia Parsitau, urban programme co-ordinator at Oxfam GB in Kenya.
“As you can imagine, the result is that many traders are unable to meet their daily needs and struggle to send their children to school, which is a very big investment. So when this kiosk is taken and goods not returned, they go back to square one.”
They could of course raise an objection with the local council. But according to Oxfam, only 27 per cent have ever reported rights violations and harassment. Corruption continues to be a major concern, with 17 per cent admitting they had at some point bribed a council official or the police – a figure likely to be higher given traders’ reluctance to admit this. Most paid bribes in order to avoid arrest and continue trading.
For Ngoroge and his colleagues, this isn’t even an option anymore. He now sits beside a canvas canopy, covering the pineapples, oranges and bananas he would usually sell from the shop front. He might take in 1,000Ksh a day now he says, but even that isn’t enough to keep him there.
“There is nothing here any more. I had a greengrocers. Now I have nothing. I’ve got no choice but to move somewhere else.”