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"id": 1523327,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1523327/?format=api",
"text_counter": 273,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Tharaka, UDA",
"speaker_title": "Hon. George Murugara",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Thank you very much, Hon. Temporary Speaker. I agree with Hon. TJ that most Members have agreed with the Bill, and have supported it. It is also important that those of us who did not voice our support last week, do so today before we move to the next important matters in the Order Paper. I thank Hon. Masara. He sat down, thought through this Bill, and came up with these important provisions, which he wants introduced to the National Police Service Commission Act. There is a widespread practice where, when somebody is employed, everybody thinks that a favour has been done to that person. They are expected to work and take care of themselves, their family and all their dependants. Nobody sits back to ask how the person will work, under what conditions and how the work will affect their mental health. Principally, this applies to our police officers and, by extension, to other disciplined forces. Recently, some soldiers came back from a peace-keeping mission in Somalia. Most of them are in a deplorable state of mind; they have lost it! They came back very violent. They need rehabilitation so that they can come back to normal societal life. Our police officers are all over the country. Some of them have been assigned to hardship areas; and because they are not used to the kind of life in those areas, when they come back to their villages, people think they are mad. We would then start speaking ill of them and others who work in the disciplined forces. This Bill is timely. We need to have programmes in place. We may start by legislating for the National Police Service (NPS). As I have always said, I have a special interest in NPS because I have brothers, sisters, cousins and other relatives who work there, and I have always sympathised with them. They do not have commensurate pay. They are still paid paltry sums of money, which they are supposed to live on and use to educate their children. This is becoming a burden to them. They also live in deplorable state without good houses. Some of them are in tents while others are in make-shift houses, where a number of families share a room. This is deplorable and it affects them. This is why the two Sections are being introduced by Hon. Masara. The Commission will now be under obligation to establish psychosocial units and formulate programmes to promote the mental health and well-being of police officers. From time to time, there are police officers who require rehabilitation. Some of them have ended up in Mathari Hospital and yet, it is not a rehabilitation centre. In fact, it is demeaning to take police officers there thinking they have mental illness. The new Section 12A provides officers with resources to cater for their mental health. Let nobody ask where those resources will come from. I can assure you that this country is not as poor as many may want to believe. It is only that, sometimes, we are questioned on how we apply our resources. Whichever way and whatever we do, let us allocate our police officers with some resources so that they do not lose it when they are working. Two, in every county, the Commission shall establish well-equipped centres in offices, camps, training colleges and communities for police officers to receive psychosocial support. Police officers are human beings and, therefore, they need a place where they can go for counselling and anything else that they may require so that they are integrated well into the society. It is common sense that if you have a gun while on duty and you are confronted by a thug and shoot him dead, you will have nightmares. It will have an effect on your mental capacity because of what you have done. Police officers assume this is part of their work and yet, those things come to haunt them when they retire. The former Chief Justice Cecil Miller fought in World War I. He sat in the High Court Building as we used to call it those days, and he would find himself throwing tantrums and hallucinating. He would salute and issue commands. Whenever he sat and was asked what the problem was, he would say: “I have seen myself in the airplanes of 1942 to 1945, flying over The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}