Mutyambai to be sworn in today

The new Inspector General of Police (IG) Hillary Mutyambai (pictured) is expected to take oath of office today.

His appointment has been gazetted in a Kenya Gazette notice dated April 8 (today).

Mutyambai was approved by Parliament last week, setting the stage for him to replace Joseph Boinnet at Jogoo House.

The outgoing IG has been meeting various units in the service to bid them farewell. Boinnet was recently appointed the Chief Administrative Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife.

But even before the new IG, gets into office, civil society groups have come up with a list of six issues they want him to address within his first 100 days in office.

The group, under the banner of Police Reforms Working Group (PRWG), want Mutyambai to deal with crime prevention and response, human rights compliance, integrity and corruption in the police service.

Police welfare

Other issues they expect him to tackle are management of police welfare, community policing and public partnerships.

They said the six issues if addressed will ensure that police officers discharge their duties within the confines of the law.

“We ask him to commit to complete the ongoing reorganisation of the new command and control reforms as announced by President Uhuru Kenyatta last year,” said Peter Kiama, the executive director of Independent Medico-Legal Unit.

He asked Mutyambai not to tolerate extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and  corruption. They want him to ensure that all officers currently implicated in those vices are interdicted, investigated and prosecuted and a record of such action be made public.

The lobby said despite billions of shillings being invested in legal and institutional reforms, police accountability especially in the areas of bribery and extortion, public order management and human rights violations have largely remained unrealised.

National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders-Kenya Executive Director Kamau Ngugi said they were deeply concerned by the "ongoing intimidation and criminalisation of human rights defenders seeking justice"

The group also accused Boinnet of ignoring court orders against senior members of the Executive on at least four occasions during his tenure, hence "promoting impunity in the national police force".

They, however, commended Boinnet for issuing guidelines on community policing and asked Mutyambai to operationalise the guidelines within 100 days. "A key resource now available to his office will be Community Social Justice Centres and human rights organisation," noted Ngugi.

Mutyambai comes to office at a time when a number of reforms are being implemented in the service. They include 24,000 Administration Police Service (APs) joining the Kenya Police and adoption of a new uniform for the more than 65,000 officers.

There is also a proposal to have each of the 290 constituencies or sub-counties named as police divisions under the command of the sub-county police commander.

Command levels

To further boost command levels at the grassroots, all chiefs’ camps that were initially manned by APs have been converted to police posts.

Each of the wards has been given a police station and put under the command of the ward police commander, replacing the former officer commanding police stations.

A recent digital listing of police officers weeded out more than 2,600 ghost workers saving the country Sh1.7 billion in annual wages.

Kenya Police had 1,447 ghost workers, 1,048 in the Administration Police and 153 in the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.