Police boss in hot soup for declining inducement from boda boda riders

A row is brewing between Mwingi town boda boda operators and police officers after the positing of a new Sub-County Police commander Mr. Francis Wahome who has pledged to firmly enforce traffic laws.
The row has soaked in Mwingi East Parliamentarians Gideon Mulyungi who demanded the new police commander toes the line telling him, “If you go to Rome, behave like Romans and therefore if you came to Mwingi and found the residents without pants you also remove yours!”
A security meeting held Friday between Mwingi Central sub county security team and Mwingi East Member of Parliament Gideon Mulyungi that was chaired by the sub county Deputy County Commissioner Omari Dima failed to ease the tension as Wahome remained firm on enforcing the traffic laws.
The boda boda operators accused the new OCPD of not cooperating especially on relaxing traffic laws as 90 percent of them do not meet the requirements and claim that enforcing of the laws was meant to force them out of business.
The security team and the MP subsequently held a meeting with over 100 Mwingi town boda boda operators at the town but similarly the meeting failed to end the tension.
Speaking during the meeting, leaders of the Mwingi town boda boda operators claimed that the OCPD was unapproachable.
“He even declined our usual welcoming offer, ‘an envelope,’ as we do to other security officers when they are posted here,” the boda boda leaders said.
At one point during the meeting, the OCPD threatened to storm out of the meeting as the unruly boda boda operators humiliated him uttering provocative words.
The boda boda operators vowed not to work with the sub county police boss unless he toes the line. They said that they would team up with their political leaders to have the police boss transferred.
Friday, two officers working at the MP’s Mwingi Central Constituency Development Funds [CDF] office were arrested following a boda boda operators’ demonstration in the town.
The police commander said that the two who were picked by security officers from their offices in Mwingi town would be charged with incitement during the boda boda protest.
Efforts by the MP Mulyungi to have his two employees released during the security meeting failed as Wahome insisted that the two would have to be arraigned in court Monday
By Denson Mututo