Little-Known Tales Of Thugs Posing As Garbage Collectors To Rob Residents

As security agencies continue their crackdown on notorious criminals, especially in Nairobi, some residents fear that a section of thugs are imploring new tricks in their bid to rob unsuspecting members of the public, more often from their places of residence.

Viral Tea analysed some of the past reports from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) showing how thugs were arrested or shot dead by police officers while defying orders to surrender and found that many of the recent cases are being reported within residential areas, more than within major cities themselves.

Simply put, the likelihood of being robbed from your own house is higher during the day than at night in a section of Nairobi estates, especially those infamous for harbouring dangerous criminals.

Many times, the thugs pounce on unsuspecting Kenyans while going about their daily activities, such as running to the shop to buy a basic item.

A garbage truck in Nairobi CBD. /DAILY NATION

For instance, you might have forgotten to buy something or you realize that your cooking oil ran out when you are about to cook. Somewhere on your way to the shop, someone threatens you with a knife or a bonoko (fake gun) and asks you to surrender your phone or any other valuable, leaving you wondering if someone had been waiting for you to leave the house.

In an estate, the following people know a residence best: a caretaker, a security guard (in some estates) and a garbage collector. It is the latter that is a preferred role for robbers while other suspects collude with caretakers to break into homes.

A majority of estates in Nairobi have specific days when garbage is collected, from Monday to Sunday, for example, collectors could be in Buruburu today, Kilimani tomorrow and Ruaraka the next day. A racket of criminals takes note of this and ensures that they are in your estate when the collectors come.

The shocking bit is that most of the robberies take place in the afternoons, when a lot of residents are away from home, between 12 pm and 3 pm. As Viral Tea discovered, this is also the same time garbage is collected in the area, leading to suspicion that the collectors could be the culprits.

In 2019, Kenyans On Twitter (KOT) raised an alarm about a garbage collector who was going about his duties with a gun strapped on his behind in a photo that was taken in secret and shared on Twitter, which went viral, attracting the DCI's attention.

"A man who was photographed armed and the matter brought to our attention has been arrested & will be charged accordingly.

"We thank KOT for bringing this matter to our attention and for the additional information that we received through DMS. Let’s work together to keep our country safe," tweeted the DCI on February 15, 2019.

The man was donning a red t-shirt from a telco company, wearing a rosary amongst several chains on his neck and a brown trouser collecting garbage, but his rearview was trotting a gun.

In 2017, residents of Roysambu in Nairobi, which is mostly inhabited by middle-class earners and students from the surrounding universities, who are often away during the day, expressed concern regarding the rate at which their houses are being broken into.

One of the residents claimed he was in school when he got a phone call from his caretaker asking him to urgently go back home. When he got to his house, he was met by a broken padlock and a vandalised house and subsequently lost a tablet, mobile phone and a laptop.

A resident in one of the urban informal settlements in Nairobi revealed to Viral Tea that robbers colluded with garbage collectors to break into his house to steal his new TV.

The suspect, who posed as one of them, was almost making away with the loot when the victim raised an alarm to other residents who seized him and frogmarched him to the police station.

Other residents noted that the collectors, especially those who attempt to strike good relations with residents, act as informants to thugs who lie in wait for their targets, relying on perfect timing to strike.

When the collectors usually come around noon in most estates, a gang of criminals ransack the garbage bag in search of goodies such as that faulty extension or water heater some residents believed they should get rid of.

Moreover, they don’t leave the estate immediately, they hang around and attack people, as they wait for the next ‘new’ garbage bag to ransack. What is even more surprising is that these gangs have marked their territorial boundaries in these estates.

Some of the age-old crime trends come after Interior Cabinet Secretary (CS) Kithure Kindiki claimed on Monday, February 6 that the increase in security in the Nairobi Central Business District (CBD) has led to a reduction in mugging cases that were notorious in the last quarter of 2022.