On Wednesday, the body of Mr Joseph Matu Mwihia was laid to rest in Kahiga Village, Nyeri. The 54-year-old pharmacist was reportedly tortured to death by police in Southern Sudan for allegedly operating an unlicenced clinic.
Matu is the latest Kenyan to be killed in the country. Twenty four Kenyans have so far been killed in the newly independent state, five of them this year alone. Tales of Kenyans being flogged haphazardly by the ragtag and bobtail forces also abound.
Rouge Officers
Strangely amidst all these barbaric attacks, Nairobi and Juba have remained eerily silent. Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Ongeri, prompted by MPs, finally broke the silence on Wednesday and revealed that a protest note had been sent to South Sudan.
Sadly, it appears that Salva Kiir’s Government is either unbothered by the spate of killings or is incapable of taming the rogue officers. That could be the reason why South Sudan is outsmarting Saudi Arabia in spewing forth brutality. Whatever the case, Juba must wake up and end these xenophobic attacks.
Kajwang’s advice: ‘Keep checking’
Will the identification card quagmire in Mr Otieno Kajwang’s house ever be sorted out? Although the Minister Immigration and Registration of Persons has on more than one occasion assured that he had loosened some bottlenecks, hunting for IDs is still not a task for the faint-hearted. It still takes eons to get an ID.
Hamida Vasanji Kassam, for instance, applied for a “duplicate” ID (No. 1239724, Serial No. 202342079) on March 18, 2012 after she lost the original. She was informed that it would be out in about three weeks time.
Three weeks have turned into months, but she is still waiting. “I have been checking at the DC’s Office in Westlands regularly and all they tell me is that I should “keep checking”. Her email is Hamidavk@gmail.com.
Ms Ruth Kalekye is also in similar predicament. She applied for a change of name on her ID (Serial no. 2307137524) on February 20, 2012. She was informed that this would take a month, but many months later, she is yet to get the ID. Like Hamida, she is always told that “keep checking whenever she checks.” Her contact is rkalekye20@yahoo.com.
The not-so-smart Ghanaian thieves
Mr Jeckonia Otieno sends his belated condoleces to people of the Republic of Ghana. The death of President John Attah Mills, he notes, was a blow to Kenya as well.
But although he knows that Ghana is still mourning, he would like to raise an issue that irked strongly him recently. It concerns the theft of his camera, which says was stolen at Ghana’s Kotoka International Airport on July 8.
The camera was pinched from his luggage (check in number 449FYE on flight KQ511 from Accra to Nairobi), which he was “forced” to check in at the airport although he had carried it as hand luggage on the flight to Accra.
On reaching Nairobi he discovered that the bag, which had been secured with a coded lock, had been forcefully opened and the camera stolen. He is certain that the theft happened at Kotoka.
Intervene
Otieno complained to Ghanaian airport authorities via email but to date, no one has bothered to reply. He hasn’t despaired though. He is requesting the Ghanaian Consulate in Kenya, “whose phones are never answered”, to intervene and help catch the not-so-smart thugs who “only stole one item from my bag”. He can be reached at jeckon2004@yahoo.com.
