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"id": 214763,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/214763/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Awori",
"speaker_title": "The Vice-President and Minister for Home Affairs",
"speaker": {
"id": 290,
"legal_name": "Moody Arthur Awori",
"slug": "moody-awori"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir, for allowing me also to make very brief remarks. I want, first of all, to congratulate the Minister for the efforts that he has put in, in fighting crime. I would have liked to see more money actually being given to this Ministry in order to give the Minister the ammunition that will help to fight crime. Mr. Speaker, Sir, a G3 gun in the hands of the police and an AK-47 gun in the hands of a criminal is almost a joke. It is really important that we should try to give more money so that we replace all the G3 guns with AK-47 guns. I think that is the only way out. When criminals know that the police have similar equipment in their hands, then they will think twice. When we look at this Ministry's Vote, Kshs26 billion is for Recurrent Expenditure while only Kshs3 billion is for Development Expenditure. We need to think again very seriously because we have earlier on stated that it is important to look at the welfare of the police in order to motivate them to go out there and fight crime. Housing is part of the development. Today's Standard Newspaper depicts a terrible situation. The newspaper showed pictures of police houses in Migori. The houses are not fit for habitation by the police or any human being. I think we need to help our Minister of State for Administration and National Security by giving him more money to improve the housing of the police. Our police, to me, are, probably, the bravest on the continent of Africa. This is because they have gone out to fight with very little at their disposal. In June, 2007, it is July 11, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2447 stated that nearly 12 officers were killed. I would like to take this opportunity to, in fact, send my condolences to the families of all those police officers who died in the line of duty. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I would like to look at the situation in our prisons so that I can relate it to the budget allocated to the Police Department. Currently, our prisons are holding 48,000 inmates. Out of this number, only about 20,000 are convicted criminals. A good number of them have not even been brought before a court of law after they appeared for the first time. I would like us to give the police more money so that they can build more police cells. We really would like a situation whereby people who are arrested are not sent to prison, but to be in the police cells. There are 48,000 prisoners, but there is accommodation only for 16,000 prisoners. It is a breeding ground for various sicknesses. There is tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, dysentery and many other diseases in our prisons. Many people contract diseases in prison because of too many people there. If we had police cells for remandees--- When people are remanded, they should be remanded in the police cells and not in prison. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I would like money to be increased for the real training of the police. We know, for instance, that there is a law which allows the police, when they arrest somebody, to give a police bail so that people do not spend the night in police cells. However, very few of our police are doing that simply because they have not been retrained. They need to be retrained so that they can issue police bonds so that a person who has been arrested does not spend the night in the police cells or prison. This will reduce the number of inmates in our prisons and thereby save lives of people who would have contracted illnesses. We would like to train the police even more to recognise that there are certain minor crimes that do not need anyone to be thrown in. For instance, a young Kenyan who is arrested for walking around without an identity card, but has it kept at home, there is no reason at all for the police to throw that person in the cell. This only serves to increase the number of inmates in prison. We have what we call the Governance, Justice, Law and Order Sector Reform Programme (GJLOS) which we have to work in tandem with so that we can, indeed, have the welfare of our people at heart. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I want to move right away from issues of security and talk about the question of airstrips. For quite some time, we used to have a lot of airstrips that made travelling within the Kenyan expanse easier. The responsibility over these airstrips has been moved to the Office of the President. There are many airstrips that have ceased operating. We need to set aside many to renovate them so that they can make easy travel. This will reduce the accidents on our highways. With airstrips all over, we will make it easier to travel around the country. This would mean, with 78 districts, almost every district headquarters should have an airstrip. This, again, will allow even our civil servants to move quickly from the headquarters to their place of work. This will reduce the cost, so that the Recurrent Expenditure, which will take Kshs26 billion of this Vote of Kshs29 billion, can be reduced when we use quick flights to the various places. Mr. Speaker, Sir, on the question of the cells that I talked about earlier, when they are constructed, or built, I would like to see a situation where children have got separate cells from grown ups. Children are people from the age of 18 years downwards. Currently, we find, in some police stations, that children of 15 years and 16 years of age are put in the same cells as adults. In fact, this is contrary to the Children Act, and we would like to ensure that our own Ministries do not go against the Children Act. So, when we build cells, we must ensure that at every police station, there are cells for young people. This House must be children-friendly. Finally, on our police force, I would like to see a situation where there will be proper compensation when officers are killed in the line of duty. Currently, we have many widows who are suffering, and whose children cannot go to school because the compensation is little and its release delays. 2448 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 11, 2007 With those very brief remarks, I beg to support."
}