Nairobi: Chang'aa brewers accused of using dangerous additives to 'win' customers

The residents are also concerned that most illicit brewers are coming up with dangerous innovations to increase potency of their drinks and beat competition.

Wananchi Reporting has received complaints from families living in areas like Kawangware, Kayole, Dandora, Kariobangi, Pipeline, Tassia, Mathare, Mukuru kwa Njenga, Kibera and other informal settlements.

Many say that their kith and kin have become addicted to the illicit drink, and can hardly function without it.

"Many people working in informal sector like mjengo are lost in the drink. Some of them even endanger their lives, working on tall buildings when half-drunk," said said Felix Ojiambo, a resident of Kawangware.

Families are now worried that their young men and women are getting lost in the drinking dens sprawn across the city estates.

The families are accusing the brewers of among other things using witchcraft to win customers.

Most of the drinking dens in Nairobi's informal areas are holed up in residential areas – some of them even sharing walls with residential houses.

“Just recently police and local administration carried out a crackdown on some of the notorious drinking dens in our area and found hundreds of liters of the illicit drink,” said Ojiambo.

The chang'aa was found packed in tens of polythene bags – most of it brewed and stored in very unhygienic conditions.

“Our young girls are also found in these dens. This is very sad,” Ojiambo told Wananchi Reporting.

Other residents claim some of the illicit brewers often add very strange things into their alcohol in an attempt to increase their ‘power’.

“There was one incident where an illicit brewer added some medical tablets bought from a chemist into her chang'aa believing it would make customers drunk quickly."

“My cousin woke up the next morning sweating and feeling sick. The bedsheets were smelling of drugs,” said Ojiambo.  

Absence of regulations in the changaa industry has left it open to individual misdemeanor, some of which have already had catastrophic effects in the country.

There have been cases of deaths and in other cases people losing their sight after ingesting poisonous drinks.

Methanol poisoning from the consumption of tainted alcohol has claimed many lives, but also left others battling blindness.

The contamination is caused by among other things unpurified water, unclean equipment, brewer additives, exposure during fermentation.

Residents are asking deputy President Rigathi Gachagua to also focus his energies in fighting changaa dens in Nairobi.