Officers challenged to improve working environment

Officers working in Kiambu County have been challenged to improve the infrastructure and other amenities in the offices where they worked for generations to come.
Kiambu Deputy County Commissioner Mr. Njuguna Kiarie said it was important to improve the working environment including furniture and equipment in offices where officers were deployed as this boosted the morale of those who took over after they moved to their next duty stations.
The DCC made the remarks Friday during the opening of a Sh45 million office for the Kiambu County Commissioner by Rev. George Likimani, an ordained priest of the PCEA Church deployed at the AP Chapel in Kiambu.
While admiring the new office, he challenged those who attended the brief ceremony saying the efforts of the County Commissioner Mr. Wilson Wanyanga were exemplary and that all officers should emulate him in their respective departments.
He further challenged all attendants to endeavour to change the state of their current offices by “even just a coat of paint” so that the former occupant could know that you have appreciated inheriting the office.
Kiarie noted that most officers had apathy due to bureaucracies that they had to go through in accessing funds for refurbishing their offices and that some ended up looking at it as laborious “and yet they would still be transferred to another station, therefore resigning and accepting to work in an environment that was not conducive at all.”
“You should not tire to improve your working environment as one spends so many valuable hours staring at the worn out paint and broken windows just because you did not want to go an extra mile in improving your office, ”said Kiarie.
He lauded the County Commissioner who is his senior in age and in service for going out of his way to oversee the construction of a magnificent office, and challenged his colleagues to borrow a leaf from him and improve their current offices so that they would leave a legacy behind when they either retired or were transferred.
“Even when you are transferred, people will always remember you for having worked to pamper your predecessors to a posh environment and this will similarly challenge them to improve it further,” he noted.
Wanyanga worked in Kiambu as District Officer before he climbed the ladder to position of County Commissioner.
He cracked a joke when he looked at his former office which he occupied since 2016 and said “I sometimes look at that office and wonder whether it’s me who actually used to sit in it,” and on a light note, he encouraged the DCC to give it a facelift before he settled down.
Wanyanga is the fourth County commissioner having taken over from Mr. Alex Ole Nkoyo who had the shortest stint in the station. Nkoyo had taken over from Esther Maina, currently in Machakos who took over from Mr. Wilson Njega currently Regional Commissioner of Nairobi County.
The County Commissioner has allocated space to departments of the National Government who had been working from rental and dilapidated offices in Kiambu town. An officer who requested to remain anonymous confided in KNA that one of the MCAs at the Kiambu County Assembly had told her to her face “all offices in this area should be demolished as they were constructed in the colonial era so that new ones come up and give Kiambu a modern look.”
She is one of the beneficiaries in the new office block and is in the process of partitioning her potion before she moves in.
By Lydia Shiloya