National Government Administration Officials (NGAOs) in Homa Bay County have been urged to double their efforts in fighting gender based violence.
Nyanza Regional Commissioner Flora Mworao said the county was recording very high prevalence rates of cases of defilement of girls, teen pregnancies and early marriages which the chiefs must tackle.
Speaking Wednesday when she met the county’s NGAOs in Tom Mboya University grounds, Mworoa cautioned the local community against engaging in out of court settlements for defilement cases.
She said the government will take stern measures against parents and guardians of victims of sexual offences who opt to settle such cases outside the official judicial systems saying such arrangements defeated the cause of justice for the affected girls.
The administrator told Chiefs to ensure that the government subsidized fertilizers reached the intended beneficiaries.
She told Chiefs to be vigilant against unscrupulous individuals who were buying the subsidized fertilizers and repacking for sale at the prevailing market prices.
“You must ensure all the registered farmers access the fertilizers for use during this planting season so as to improve food security,” she told the chiefs.
She said that Homa Bay County had so far received over 3,360 bags of subsidized fertilizers.
Mworao at the same time directed chiefs to fully implement the Presidential tree planting programme in their areas of jurisdiction for the realization of the targeted national 15 billion trees planting over the next 10 years across the country.
Homa Bay County Commissioner Moses Lilan told the chiefs to step up efforts to fight production and consumption of illicit brews and drugs. He directed that surveillance be beefed up along the Lake Victoria shoreline to curb infiltration of contraband from across the country’s borderline.
Lilan told the chiefs to strengthen community policing through the ‘nyumba kumi’ approach to weed out criminals in their areas of jurisdiction.
The Chiefs through their representative Joshua Ochogo appealed to the government to increase their funding for transport and other operating expenses saying that inflationary pressures had eroded their purchasing power.
The administrators also urged the government to decentralize the issuance of their uniforms to cut costs they incurred traveling to Nairobi for the same.
By Davis Langat
