KENYA BANNS PLASTIC PAPER BAGS
During my days in campus, Environmental Education was a basic
course that was mandatory to everybody taking a science course. A common unit
as it was called. The point I am struggling to drive home is about the paper
bag debate. The banning of plastic bags as envisaged is more of a problem than
an environmental solution.
Although it is not a total ban, the ban will negatively
affect the economy. Anonymous sources place the figure of the number of Kenyans
who are going to be rendered jobless by the closure of polythene manufacturing
companies to a whopping 600 000. In a country where unemployment rates are at
its peak of 40% -in fact it could be twice the documented figure, retrenching
over 600 000 people at once is disastrous.
The effect of this will be felt when the revenue the
government collects from these people are unavailable. These people will plunge
deeper into economic desert in these hard economic times. Though the
environment might appear clean due to reduced nylon bags because of the
reduction in the over 4000 tones monthly manufactured nylon bags, the
government will lose the value added tax and income generated from its trade.
The drafters of the bill that birthed the act were a bit
parochial. The problem is not the plastic or nylon single use bags, but the
solid paper bag waste that pollutes the environment in general. Consequently
the bill would have sought to address the problem not create more problems. The
act would have addressed the pollution and disposal without banning the use.
The progenitors of the bill would have thought about implementing responsible
use and disposal rather than banning the product. Despite being non
biodegradable, it can be recycled, used to make other products or disposed in
an environmentally friendly way.
Some of these acts of parliament are a direct punishment and
oppression of the poor. In such economic organization like Kenya where the poor
do not participate in a functional way in driving the economy, the rich class-
government included – have no sympathy with the plight of those below or on the
poverty line. It is the poor who use the single plastic bags. It is them who
work in the factories which manufacture the bags and in most cases it is them
who directly benefit from its trade. By banning these nylon bags, the
government and the rich in general are waging an economic war on the poor. It’s
like bombing their ramshackle settings.
Let’s be candid here. Who uses these bags, so that they are
in for it? It’s the poor. Where will the poor get the one to four million Kenya
shillings fine? If you arrest a poor man and throw him in jail for one to four
years for using plastic bag, are you helping this person already poor? To me
this plastic paper bag thing is a conspiracy against the poor. The government
is out to ensure the poor remain poor forever at whatever cost.
Until now, the implementers of this act are yet to ensure
alternative carrier bags are in the market.
What kind of strategy is that? The
effective date of implementation is already here and yet alternative carriers
are yet to be introduced in the market. How will the citizen transition from
plastic bags when the government is affecting the law without alternative carriers?
The government says they have identified forty companies to manufacture the
alternative carrier bags and that they will be having an exhibition at KICC
about alternative carriers made of sisal, leather, fabric etc. this would have
been done several months before the effective date of the law. Even the new
constitution did not take effect at the speed of lightening.
Because solid waste management is a devolved function, the
governors should make sure the respective by-laws ostensibly for implementing
the ban are not hastened, drastic and oppressive on the common mwananchi.
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