Kenya: Corruption & ineptitude compromising regulatory bodies' ability to enforce laws, including against harmful business conduct
"Ineptitude, rundown agencies the handmaiden of corruption"
We talk so much about corruption and its corrosive effects on our society, economy and country. There is a lot of debate on how to raise the price of corruption to make it less attractive. One way is to secure convictions. But there is an area we often overlook. Corruption has become so pervasive and, arguably, endemic because our institutions have been run down to such an extent that they have become willing and veritable handmaidens for this malfeasance...
Let me give an example. I am in a group that is involved in a battle against a Chinese road construction company and the National Environment Management Authority (Nema). The latter gave permission for the erection and operation of a base camp, commonly referred to as a campsite, in a residential area on Ngong Road, in Karen to be precise, opposite a property owned by the Kenyatta family. This has, questionably — indeed, arguably illegally — been converted into an industrial operation...The ultimate irony of this is that it was facilitated by an institution mandated “to bring harmony in the management of the country’s environment” and “to be the principle instrument of the Government of Kenya in the implementation of all policies relating to the environment”...
Lake Victoria, which is a veritable lifeline to many, is being choked to death by the pollution that is being poured into it by the many entities which, by law, should be treating their effluent. Thirteen types of toxic waste are flowing into the lake. The water of Lake Victoria is increasingly polluted and unsafe and the largest tropical freshwater lake and second-largest freshwater lake in the world is fast becoming one of the largest sewers in the world! National and county governments, through several regulatory bodies, have, in theory, the oversight authority to stop this pernicious murder of Lake Victoria but are not. Some of our oversight and regulatory institutions are so rotten that the talk is not about what they are supposed to be doing but the informal ‘fee’ charged for them to let one flout the regulations and break the laws that they should uphold.