The saying "desperate times call for desperate measures" in Kenya often represents the only practical solution even for the government. Corruption is such a deep-rooted scourge that in its chasms lie deep-rooted habits that fish and take advantage of youth discomfort, extreme poverty and the dream of easy money to survive in everyday life.
One of these businesses is the trade in pieces of scrap metal and scrap, the so-called "scrap metal" that in Kenya feeds an important business that borders on legality.
While the amount of scrap metal has increased exponentially with economic development, the trade in the various materials has always been defined good-naturedly as a sort of natural recycling that allows the less well-off classes to build useful (albeit rudimentary) tools, patch up their shanty houses and so on, even with inventiveness and applaudable intuition.
But there are not only creative people, the search for "scrap metal" to resell it moves the micro-criminality to take it away from public works, such as bridges (some recently collapsed in the country also owe it to this phenomenon) and other infrastructures.
In addition, in order to find the metal in landfills, the illegal collectors often set fire to everything else, creating toxic and carcinogenic fumes that pollute the environment and make people sick.
The latest sensational event happened to an important pylon of Kenya Power, whose sabotage to get some pieces of the structure caused a national blackout last January 11.
that lasted for several hours.
Nine senior officials of the national power company were arrested for the incident, accused of ignoring the situation, which had been reported to them two days earlier.
So President Uhuru Kenyatta declared that as of today the sale of scrap metal pieces is banned throughout the country.
"We have ascertained vandalism against our power transmission lines," Kenyatta said, "We have also seen cases of sabotage, such as in the case of Naivasha, where people have unbolted some of our power transmission lines and pylons creating chaos and mayhem. So as of today we are putting in place a moratorium on the export, purchase and sale of any waste material until we have proper guidelines in place."
It is not only corruption or the indifference of institutions that have made the situation untenable, but the tentacles of a mafia that many are afraid to bring to the surface and denounce.
"You must not allow political intimidation to interfere with your work. You must execute your mandate without fear or favor and without intimidation from any side," the President said, addressing the police force and ordering them to activate a crackdown on the illegal scrap metal trade in the country, "These are acts of economic sabotage that fall under acts of treason and the law is very clear on how we treat individuals who commit treasonous acts."