By Dickens Wasonga in Kisumu city.

The town clerk of Kisumu municipal council risks being arrested and taken to court if the council fails to identify official dumping ground at the expiry of a 21 day notice issued against it by the area district public health officer.

Addressing a stakeholders meeting held at a Kisumu hotel yesterday, a tough talking Kisumu east district commissioner, Mr Mabeya Mogaka, said it was time action was taken against the officers at the council who have failed tax payers by not providing quality service to the city’s residents.

The visible disapointed Dc said it was a shame that Kisumu, whose population is over 500,000 people, and the country’s third lagest city, did not have a designated area to dispose of waste, adding that an organised council would ensure it has in its system a morden waste management procedure, which is acceptable to the national environment management authority.

He observed that currently it’s not unusual to spot garbage strewn all over in the estates, with areas such as Kisumu’s mega city, choking with filth.

At times filth flows even at the town center, with burst sewers not fixed for several days. “This kind of neglect can not be allowed to go on in this city”, he said.

The meeting, which brought together several stakeholders in the tourism industry from Western and Nyanza province, turned into a bashing podium for the municipal council, which only a few years ago was made a millenium city, and was dubbed one of the cleanest city’s within the east African region.

Many participants called for a proper planning of the town and asked the council to pull down the mushrooming kiosks and clear the sreets of hawkers and the menacing urchins.

They also asked the city fathers to create parking areas for the cyclists, commonly known here as “bodaboda”, away from the town center, in order to ease the unnecessary delays of traffic jams and accidents, which are the order of the day currently.

The Nyanza provincial commissioner, Mr. Francis Mutie, who was the chief guest at the brain storming meeting, assured the investors and the city residents that security would be beefed up.

The PC disclosed that they have rescued over 50 street boys in a mop up exercise to create a city free of street families, adding that those removed from the streets have been taken to remand homes for rehabilitation.

Mutie also asked the local authority to improve the road network within the town and its environs, especially the road from the Kisumu airport to the CBD which is currently delapidated.

He noted that there was need for the political class in the area to support the civil servants working in the province to bring development to the locals.

ENDS.