Isiolo County Commissioner (CC) Geoffrey Omoding has directed Chiefs and Assistant Chiefs to incorporate Nyumba Kumi elders in their effort to strengthen security, through which intelligence reports on crimes would easily be made available by the public.
Addressing Assistant County Commissioners, Chiefs and their assistants and National Police Reservists (NPR), Omoding said that security agencies were all out to ensure the panya routes used by the criminals who steal livestock and the highway bandits are sealed and the suspects arrested.
The CC said every chief is chairman of the location security committee and should know the area very well by involving ‘Nyumba Kumi’ elders to get reports on the crime suspects in case of a joint operation to enable security men to apprehend suspects with ease.
He added that Chiefs, OCS and Nyumba Kumi elders should work together since they are security officers dealing with law breakers, assuring them of the government support in their undertakings, so that the residents could go about their activities without fear.
The administrator further directed security chiefs in the area to identify areas that needed backup at either the Location or Sub-County levels, so that the security operation in the area could succeed, adding that updates on the security status of their areas should be submitted to him on a weekly basis.
On the recent cattle rustling, Omoding said that 95 percent of livestock recently stolen from the area had been recovered and appealed to wananchi to give police the correct figures about lost animals, and avoid exaggerating the numbers because it gave the security officers a hard time to account for the lost and recovered livestock.
“The problem with pastoralists is that they do not give the exact number of the lost animals and more often than not, they exaggerated the figures so as to get more in compensation,” the CC said.
By Abduba Mamo
