The national environmental complaints committee (NECC) has faulted the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) over laxity in taming increasing environmental degradation in various parts of Thika, Kiambu County.
The environmental regulator took issue with NEMA for allegedly abetting continuous flouting of environmental guidelines as stipulated by the Ministry of Environment.
The ombudsman’s secretary John Chumo particularly criticized NEMA for allowing production of quarry materials at Kilimambogo village in Thika East under unsafe circumstances.
Quarries in the village are reported to have been using blasting materials thereby causing air and noise pollution alongside endangering the lives of residents living near the excavation sites.
Chumo who visited the village alongside other committee members decried that quarry materials have been flying as far as 500 meters from the mining sites to people’s homesteads jeopardizing their operations.
He said that a number of injuries have so far been reported with a section of women from the semi-arid village having aborted as a result of noise and shock occasioned by the ‘illegal’ mining of quarry materials in the area.
He decried that even workers at the sites are not safely dressed and equipped and that lack of consistency in complying to the law had put locals at the centre of grave dangers.
While most of the quarries at the village remain unfenced, Chumo lamented that the mining sites were exposing livestock and children to the risk of falling in the pits especially now that most of them have moved for holidays.
Chumo further decried that most quarry owners have been leaving the excavation sites unrehabilitated contrary to environmental regulations that require them to fill the pits and plant trees after ending their mining activities.
The environment controllers gave a close notice if the quarries will not have met the stipulated environmental guidelines.
At the same time, Chumo took issue with NEMA for failing to act on poor waste disposal at Kang’oki dumpsite where he revealed that air pollution, lack of fencing and anyhow discarding of waste had endangered locals living near the area.
He called on Kiambu County government under which the dumpsite falls to enforce waste segregation at the source to ensure that the final waste is organic and convertible into fertilizer and or generate energy.