Interior Cabinet Secretary (CS) Kithure Kindiki on Wednesday, April 12 said that the government is set to double security forces in bandit-prone areas in a bid to scale up efforts to tame banditry in the North Rift.
While appearing before the National Assembly, Kindiki promised to invest heavily in equipping the police with modern equipment after the service’s funding was reportedly stopped.
“We have revived the police equipment modernization program, and in the next 3 years we are going to spend Ksh.20 billion to ensure that the police equipment is modernized, including police air wing,” he said.
Kindiki also expressed hope in reviving the police air wing in the next three months, and to have acquired at least three gunship helicopters and some unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), that is drones, for the National Police Service (NPS).
Explaining the reasons for the sporadic bandit attacks, Kindiki assured that his Ministry was doing everything possible to reach a finality to the problem, adding that “It cannot be done in a month or a year, but we will get there. We appeal for patience and understanding”.
Kindiki asserted that all instances of extrajudicial killings are actively under investigation, and the policy of President William Ruto’s administration has zero tolerance for extrajudicial killings, adding that no officer who misuses their firearm to kill people will be protected.
“There are no shoot-to-kill orders. All officers involved in managing public protests, demonstrations, riots and crowd control are under very strict instructions not to use live bullets when dealing with members of the public,” he went on.
Regarding the death of Chuka bodaboda chairman Willis Mugambi, Kindiki stated that the government has transferred the area OCPD to carry out investigations on whether a police officer might have fired a live bullet that killed him.
“The reason the OCPD was transferred is that there were very strict orders given by the Inspector General of Police that there should be no live bullets used in crowd control, not just in Chuka but even in other protests. We want to establish when the OCPD is not in office if indeed it’s a police officer who fired that bullet against the orders and the policy of the government,” Kindiki added.
The Interior CS also claimed that a civilian who is licensed to carry a firearm might have killed Mugambi.
