Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet has assured Kenyans that the police reforms are on course with the digitization of the forces’ operations and improved welfare for the officers also in the pipeline.
Boinnet, while announcing the appointment of new regional police commanders on Thursday said that they will continue to implement the reform agenda with the aim of making the force a world class security organization in their operations and welfare.
In the announced changes the new regional commanders will be Eunice Kihiko in Eastern, Philip Ndolo in Nairobi, Judy Lamet in Central, Paul Soi to head North Eastern, Edward Mwamburi is now the head in Rift Valley, Marcus Ochola who will head Coast, and Rashid Yakub in Western and Dr. Vincent Makokha to head Nyanza region.
“The current regional commanders from the Kenya police and the Administration Police (AP) service have been recalled but they retain their ranks and will be redeployed elsewhere within the national police service and none has lost their job,” explained Boinnet.
He added that the journey towards full digitization of the police service system, procedures and processes will be formally launched on January 7, 2019 at Kilifi County Commander’s offices by the Interior CS Fred Matiang’i.
“We want to migrate from the old way of doing things in operation now into a totally digital platform in three areas including personnel management, administrative procedures and systems and more importantly to digitize the Occurrence Book (OB) together with the accompanying crime management systems,” said Boinet.
He further said, “we have been implementing the directives given to us by the President on the 13th of September last year and we have done a couple of things including paying all police officers their house allowances as approved by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC).”
“We expect officers who will not get accommodation in the government owned police lines to make private arrangements to get alternative accommodation effective next month,” explained the IG.
Boinet said that the process to procure the new police uniforms for all those on general duty is on course and the material will be sourced from local manufacturers and added the garments will be made by the National Youth Service (NYS) with the intention being to stimulate the local textile industry as well as the entire value chain.
“During the festive season we experienced far fewer incidents of crime and accidents on the roads and we are grateful to the public for heeding our call to be extra cautious on our highways,” he said.
“From our records we have seen a remarkable drop in the number of deaths from accidents on the roads from 3, 700 recorded in 2017 down to 3, 156 last year,” he added.
By Joseph Ng’ang’a
