It’s now the turn of police officers to have a significant pay rise

By Hassan Omar Hassan

No police officer should earn less than fifty thousand shillings. Their terms of service should include housing, medical cover and life insurance. Unlike the teachers and doctors, they can’t go on strike. Some of their fundamental rights are limited by the Constitution including Article 41 on labour relations. But that is not to mean officers have no right to fair remunerations and reasonable working conditions. Therefore someone must speak and someone else must listen.

Parliament this week approved names of members to the National Police Service Commission (NPSC) almost one year after the process of the establishment of the Commission started! A delay I largely believe was influenced by a lack of desire for police reforms. I am though confident of the capacity of its members to deliver on their mandate. Mr Johnstone Kavuludi will chair the Commission while its members are Mr Ronald Musengi, Murshid Mohamed, Esther Chui-Colombini, Mary Awuor and Major Muiu.

I do believe they are conscious of the great expectations both the officers and society has in the NPSC. I wish them well in the discharge of their mandate. I thought we will advise them to be faithful to the people of Kenya. Your tenures of office are protected. This is so as it is expected that you will have to make hard decisions often unpopular with the political class. It secures you independence at a personal and institutional level.

In defining the extent of your mandate and programmes, the aspirations of the people of Kenya must be at the heart of your institutional creed. Consider the views of the political class, but your eventual decisions must be guided by the Constitution and the legal framework as well as your conscience on what is right and just. The people of Kenya will stand up for you when you stand up for them. Ask me. It is the confidence you will enjoy from the people that will make your ‘stay’ at the NPSC memorable and eventful.

The fatality of your tenures is in wilfully trying to appease and please those you think ‘helped’ you secure your appointments. Your destruction is in your inability to avoid the ‘mousetrap’ of greed.

Ultimately, the independence of the institution stretches only to the extent of the independence inherent in each one of you.

I believe that it is not institutions that are independent. It is people who are independent who make these institutions independent.

As you embark on your mandate the terms of service of police officers must be high up your priority list. I think it’s time we significantly and qualitatively improved the terms of service of police officers. We spent a significant amount of our energies in building mechanisms for accountability of the police service. The mechanisms now need to start grinding.

The NPSC, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights among a host of internal and external caveats and audits of police conduct.

We now need to dedicate equal measure of commitment to improving the terms of service. It completes the realm of police reform. It impacts on service delivery and accountability.

My vision is to see young Kenyans answer to the calling of being police officers. In the same way ‘A’ students aspire to be doctors, engineers, lawyers among others, I hope to see ‘A’ students say “I want to be a police officer” as the media interviews them after topping national examinations! What a transformation that would be.

The writer is a lawyer and former commissioner with the KNCHR