Development has been on the lips of every Kenyan either for the right or wrong reasons. I am not ashamed to say that it has been a subject of political campaigns/rallies to woe voters in the next general election. Kibera is one such area that is underdeveloped but if you have plans to use antics to woe voters here then you will be doing a mistake of your life time.
Sigar Angumba, an opinion leader in his own right has been living in Kibera, Lindi/Kisumu Ndogo village for the past 8 years and he takes us thought what he has been doing in Kibera about development since he came to live here.
A teacher by profession, he has been involved in doing trainings in schools and he is now working on matters of sexual gender based violence after being part of the famous Sita kimya awareness project of Film-Aid as a Co-coordinator. Sigar says that the SGBV is categorized in different levels; Kibera SGBV working group, Sub-working groups which are referral entities namely Raila, Katwekera, Kisumu Ndogo (1st cluster), Lindi, Silanga and Soweto east (2nd cluster) , Mashimoni and Laini (3rd cluster) this are just but sectors of response to SGBV cases which according to him, when they hear about any case they should report to a medical institution within 72 hours to ensure a medical test is carried to have proof for pinning down the culprit. After this is down, the psychosocial sector deals with the counseling of the defiled to bring her back to normal. They have been working together with the Centre for Rights, Education, and Awareness (CREAW).
If I were a member of Parliament for Lang’ata constituency I would in the first 6months priorities the following key issues;
- Focus on working together with non-governmental organizations and civil society within Kibera to fast track developmental agenda since they are already doing a lot in the area. Many youths within Kibera slums are jobless and therefore supporting the grass root groups, community based initiatives will encourage youths to actively participate in income generating activities hence being able to provide for themselves.
- Rally my support behind the organizations that run sponsorship programmes so that they can be able to help many students enroll for tertiary education hence a skilled work force from Kibera that will intern trigger development.
- Encourage/work together with medical practitioners to offer maternity services at discounted rates for Kibera Women and the government to ensure that a hospital that can handle emergency patients is put up in the heart of Kibera to see to it that the referrals currently being done {referring patients to Mbagathi district and Kenyatta hospitals} is taken care of in this hospital.
Slum upgrading in itself is a success but the ‘commoners’ as he calls them, are in one way a problem. Bye and large Sigar thinks that this should have been a collective responsibility between Government and the people by way of consultations on the modality to follow so that consensus would have been reached before the transfer of people was done.
Advice to the youths would be; we have been talking about revolution, time is now……lets change the face of kibera for the betterment of future generations.
