By MWANIKI MUNUHE
KENYA: Poor administrative policies and working conditions in the Police Service are a major factor in the rising insecurity.
Consequently, Laikipia West MP Wachira Karani seeks to address these and other related issues through a Bill to be introduced in Parliament soon. Officers struggling to end insecurity in various so-called hardship areas have welcomed the proposals.
Interviews with multiple police officers undertaken by this newspaper reveal shocking administrative lapses that could explain failures to curb insecurity. Our sources argue that personnel changes that ignore failed policies will do little to make things better.
Mostly affected are arid and semi-arid areas where special contingents of General Service Unit officers have previously been sent to help deal with rising insecurity. For instance, the Government has deployed GSU officers to Garissa where many innocent people have lost their lives. A GSU officer has also been appointed to take over from the regular police officer that was in charge of the region. His ability to secure results in the face of regular terror attacks will be limited, sources say, due to non-operational issues.
Poor working conditions
One of the issues identified by officers who spoke to The Standard On Saturday is the use of transfers as punitive measures against supposedly errant officers. The officers say transfers to hardship areas have predominantly been undertaken as a disciplinary measure without to the working conditions. Officers who fall out of favour with their bosses on issues unrelated to indiscipline also suffer the same fate.
This “humiliation”, they say, affects the morale of officers working in hardship areas so much; they are less diligent in their duties and more susceptible to corruption.
“The truth that has consistently been kept away from the public is that none of us in the service wants to work in arid areas,” said one of the officers we spoke to. “Despite the challenges involved, you have no advantage whatsoever over your colleagues working otherwise better regions. For this reason, majority of those of working in such areas are either new recruits or officers transferred there as a disciplinary measure.”
It is further understood that some officers working in hardship areas have even attempted to either bribe or use patrons in Government to secure transfers. Those who cannot buy or muscle their way out remain in the region as a demoralised force.
“If you talk to anybody who has been sent to hardship areas like Turkana, Garissa and so on, they will tell you the first thing you do after reporting is look for ways of getting a transfer. That is a fact. Whether you are going to bribe or talk to bosses to get a favour is a different issue altogether,” said another officer.
Dr Karani’s Bill hopes to introduce a special pay package for security officers in arid and semi-arid areas. The Bill, a draft of which
has seen, seeks to also streamline and set certain procedures to be followed during transfers to kill the habit of favouritism and mistreatment of security officers.
The Laikipia West MP says most security lapses are associated with poorly motivated officers in hardship areas who have been the victims of flawed administrative processes in the police service.
“Does it make sense to you, for instance, that a group of five or ten cattle rustlers can terrorise an entire village in Laikipia County for over three hours and get away with livestock when there is a police station only two or three kilometres away?” he asks. “It can only happen in situations where police officers are highly demotivated. When officers are not motivated, they can’t see any reason to work harder or risk their lives in the line of duty. They feel they are only there because they are being punished. We have to reverse the situation.”
