City Hall to spend over Sh120m on city askaris

City Hall plans to spend Sh120 million to recruit 1,000 new inspectorate officers next year.

It will spend a further Sh100 million in the procurement of new uniforms for the inspectorate officers and Sh68 million in the training and procurement of protective gear for the inspectorate department. The exercise is aimed at ensuring improved security in the county.

This was revealed in the County Annual Development Plan 2020/2021 report, which indicates that City Hall currently has 1,896 inspectorate and investigative officers.

“The new members of staff will be instrumental in the implementation of enforcement mechanisms meant to address compliance in traffic control, control of hawking activities, control of boda boda activities within the central business district and enhance revenue collections,” the report reads.

Training facility

To facilitate this, the county government will give a further Sh200 million for the construction of a modern training facility to promote capacity building and improve service delivery.

The security and compliance department is headed by Chief Officer Tito Kilonzi and is tasked with providing safety and security services by investigating and prosecuting crimes related to the county government of Nairobi.

“The county government will also spend Sh27 million for the purchase of three county motor vehicles to ensure timely response,” reads the report.

This comes in the wake of an ongoing City Hall staff bio-metric registration exercise aimed at capturing the exact number of workers and weeding out ghost ones. Once complete, the officers, popularly known as kanjos, will receive new look uniforms and bio-metric cards for easier identification.

Governor Mike Sonko launched a voluntary early retirement scheme last year. The scheme targeted staff aged above 50 years.