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{
"id": 19616,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/19616/?format=api",
"text_counter": 312,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Ojode",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister, Ministry of State for Provincial Administration and Internal Security",
"speaker": {
"id": 197,
"legal_name": "Joshua Orwa Ojode",
"slug": "joshua-ojode"
},
"content": "at the grassroots level. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you heard Mr. Mungatana saying that we must decentralize the services of this oversight body. Those are administrative issues. We will come back with administrative issues which will now make us decide on whether we go on counties or on the former provincial heads which are only eight; that is Nyanza, Western, Rift Valley, Coast, Central, Eastern, North Eastern and Nairobi. So, that should not be included in the Bill because you can change as time goes by. You can even decide to do offices within the 47 counties. You can even decide to merge some of these areas. So, that should be left as an administrative matter. We should not have any problems with that. He also talked about the biting powers. The Bill gives a lot of powers to the members. They will be summoning police officers who go against the spirit of the Bill itself. So, I do not think we should have a problem with that. My colleagues were talking about transferring officers who have made mistakes in their respective areas of work. It is no longer going to be business as usual. If a police officer makes a mistake without regard to the provisions of this Bill, there are clauses which will be used in order to discipline that particular police officer. I am glad also to note that a majority of my police officers are doing a good job. Although some of my colleagues keep on bashing the police officers as taking bribes, but when you challenge them to show proof that, indeed, they are taking bribes, nobody comes out openly to say that, yes, I gave a bribe to such a police officer. That is why I had to introduce the name tags. The police officers in full uniform must have name tags together with the force number. If you are asked for a bribe, you can just note the number and the name of that particular officer in order for me to discipline him. So, we should not just bash police officers for the sake of it. We should also discard that because it is not true that some of these fellows take bribes. Maybe one or two errant officers take bribes, but I have never seen this happen. The Chair is also a lawyer. You know that both the giver and the taker of a bribe are making a mistake. All of them must be taken to court. So, the police officers should not just be bashed for the sake of it. Secondly, these are our brothers and sisters. When we keep on demoralizing them that they are taking bribes, it is not fair to them. We keep on demoralizing them on the road that I gave this particular officer some money, it quite demoralizes the work of the officer. So, I would suggest that once this Bill is passed, I think that if at all there was something like that, it will now reduce drastically because my officers know that there is a new law which must be followed, acted on, enforced and implemented. James Orengo said that there are reasons why this Act has come. Yes, it is true, we have reasons. That is why this Act has to come in. If you listened to the story which was being narrated by Mr. James Orengo, those are the things of the past. That is actually the reason why we had to bring in the Bill where a policeman comes in and says that you are not supposed to be in this office, you go to court and you are delayed. That is why we had to bring this Bill to deny them that kind of harassment."
}