INTEGRATED APPROACH

TRUCKERS’ PARKING BAY FACILITY, AS ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD IN SALGAA “WILD WEST”NAKURU, KENYA

Abstract

Traffic congestion in many areas particularly poorly designed truckers parking bays presents a unique public health threat due to toxicity of its emission, accidents, oil spills and social evils as other studies have shown. Salgaa known as “wild west†situated 20 km from Nakuru city on Nakuru – Eldoret highway in Kenya, began as a small market centre twenty years ago. Since then, it has grown to a middle size urban due to its famous night stop over for truckers moving from Mombasa to other parts of East African countries. The government put a ban on movement of trailers at night due to accidents they cause along the highway. Salgaa not only offered favourable spot to hosts truckers but also attracted sex trade. Despise the economic benefits from sex trade; both truckers and the sex trade business have resulted to negative environmental impacts which are critical and needed to be addressed. The government and NGOs efforts to address the negative impacts have yielded little because of the non integrated holistic approach employed. Drawing on government and NGO reports, as well as other documentary sources, this research study examined the integrated holistic approach to truckers’ parking bay and sex trade on environmental health, safety and socio economic status. Data was collected from 60 respondents drawn from 30 commercial sex workers, 20 truckers and 10 residents of Salgaa using questionnaires, focus group, selected by simple randomization. Reliability and validity of the instrument was tested through Cronbach test. The data was analysed by means of SPSS tool using descriptive statistics and hypotheses tested using regressions, ANOVA, and Lickert scale at 0.05 alpha for testing level of significance.  The study found that the truckers parking bay primarily contributed significantly to the sex trade and secondarily resulted to 12 cases of fire accidents from oil spills in a year,5% rate of  HIV/Aids infection per year, high level of  drugs and alcohol abuses, 3-5 road accidents per week, 15% school dropouts in a year. The prevention and control management of environmental and socio economic hazards using integrated conventional and faith value approach by NGOs and government agents were lacking hence increasing the magnitude of the hazards. The findings will be used to formulate policy for environmental hazard management and provision of education to the public.