EACC accuses county officials of sharing slots in police recruitment

Residents of Tana River Country demonstrate along Hola Town streets last Thursday to protest against recent police recruitment exercise. [PHOTO: HASSAN BARISSA/STANDARD]

County officials shared out slots reserved for police recruits even before recruitment began, an investigation by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has revealed.

The anti-corruption body also says that to conceal corruption, officials bungled the exercise at the medical stage in several recruiting centres.

The commission, which has called for nullification of the exercise, said most lodged complaints showed that most recruits were turned away during the medical examination stage without any reason.

Of the slots in many recruiting centres, EACC spokesman Yasin Amaro said reports show the slots were divided among senior police officers who include some county commissioners, their deputies, governors and their deputies, Speakers and Members of Parliament.

Public outcry

There has been a public outcry over the exercise with the Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA) also calling for scrapping of the results and a repeat of the exercise.

Amaro told The Standard on Saturday: “We have received several complaints and from our examination, the exercise was compromised when the medical exercise was pushed late into the night. This is when the real candidates were short-changed with no reasons given.”

The exercise was to start at 8am and end at 5pm according to the time table released by the National Police Service Commission (NPSC) but was pushed until 2am the following day in many centres countrywide.

A potential recruit who turned up at a centre in Uasin Gishu County said all was well until when they reached medical stage when the number inside the hall suddenly swelled.

Final listing

He said: “We were initially about fifty picked during the exercise but when we converged at Kapsoya dispensary we were about 60.”

The 26-year-old man who sought anonymity for fear of reprisals said the medical examination at the dispensary was done at 2am where the final listing did not include majority of those who went through the vetting the whole day.

“Those who did not have anyone to support them were told they were unlucky. They were not even given their medical examination results,” he added.

Amaro said most complaints accuse the county and district security committees of messing up the exercise. Potential recruits were required to have attained a D+ (plus) in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination. Degree and diploma certificate holders were also eligible, provided they were not more than 30 years old.

Of the 10,000 recruits, six thousand are expected to report at the Kenya Police Training College in Kiganjo, Nyeri County as 4,000 of those recruited as Administration Police reported to Embakasi, Nairobi County.

But Parliament has asked NPSC to push forward the August 5 reporting date for recruits pending a probe.

Consumers Federation of Kenya, which has called for nullification of the exercise said they had received thousands of complaints from the public.

Untold impunity

“The exercise was marred by corruption, open bribery and failure to follow the timeline given among other wrongs which cannot be sanitised in any way,” said the federation’s Secretary General Stephen Mutoro.

He said from their investigations, it was established that each successful candidate parted with between Sh100,000 and 200,000. In one instance, he says, a governor was given three slots in each recruitment centre while an MP was given half of the slots in his district.

In Garissa town, Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (SUPKEM) Abdullahi Salat, who was one of the observers, claimed that some three slots out of twelve were slated for a specific community.

Commission Chairman Mumo Matemu said EACC has received several complaints which they will be comparing with another report by NPSC team, which was formed to investigate other claims arising from the exercise.