By Timothy Makoha
Friday, November 13, 2009
It is easy to tell that the Government has given up all forms of authority in Eastleigh – the fastest growing business hub in the city.
Both the local and the central Governments are either disinterested about what exactly goes on in Eastleigh or are plainly pretty clueless on how to handle matters in the area.
Despite hosting brisk business running into millions of dollars, Eastleigh remains by and large a Somali enclave with little Government presence.
With the Chief’s Office — the last Government outpost — having been carted away to create room for private development, it is telling just how helpless the Government has become.
You would think that the same zeal with which we spend over Sh1.2 billion manufacturing the first Somali Government after the ouster of Siad Barre in 1991 should inform the Government’s decision not just to exert its full authority in Eastleigh but to also demonstrate that Mogadishu outlaws will not export their trade to Nairobi.
But this is just one of the challenges. With its bustling crowds, Eastleigh still suffers acute lack of running basic utilities.
Its roads are impassable. Sewage and rotting garbage flow through gullies. Traffic is thick with some access roads fenced off. Verandas are littered and manholes gape dangerously.
And even as building experts warn of unsafe structures in Nairobi, the real danger lurks in Eastleigh. Live electric cables lie open in some shopping malls — some snaking just under metallic staircases, others dangling treacherously overhead.
Some buildings have already developed cracks, hardly a year after they were put up. Some, especially their basement are poorly lit, with unmarked exit points. The malls stretching the main street of the shopping centre are one big mass grave in waiting.
However, except for the City Council licences glued to ceilings of shops, there is little else in the form of Government in Eastleigh. Until it happens — and it will surely do, this ticking time bomb remains insignificant to city authorities.
The Government, on the other hand, maintains bookish silence like it is true that Eastleigh is a "Sovereign State". It is this inaction that has quickly transformed what was once a haven for Somali refugees into a commune of criminals – Kenyans and Somalis alike.
Today, it is an open secret that Eastleigh serves as the recruiting and financial centre for hardline Islamists exporting war back to Somali and elsewhere on the globe, a terrorist hiding place and a money-laundering hub. Tax evasion rings have it easy, as smuggled goods find their way into the market without as much ado.
There are two things why the Government need not remain helpless. First, Eastleigh is not just another Mogadishu outpost. It is the Dubai for so many Kenyans — selling anything and everything.
By neglecting Eastleigh, the Government has left her people to their own devices — exposed to all forms of risk.
Secondly, it is the duty of any disciplined Government to provide services to a community that does not only pay taxes but also serves a large of part of the population. And with the onset of heavy rains, the imperative to repair roads in Eastleigh just became more urgent.
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