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"id": 214779,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Wetangula",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs",
"speaker": {
"id": 210,
"legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
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"content": "Everything everywhere in this country revolves and rotates around this Ministry. Of late, for the last one or so years, this country has witnessed literally run-away crime. The body count we are witnessing in this country is frighteningly unacceptable. It is a bother to many of us. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, those of us who have the opportunity to travel all the time in the representation of our country and Government are now facing a lot of questions from all over, about the state of security in our country. It is for this reason that I would have loved to see a lot more money put in this Ministry, to address the problems of insecurity. I have said before, and I want to say it again that, in a country, where we have no immediate military threat to our borders--- I want to suggest that we freeze the recruitment of any military personnel for the next four to five years, and concentrate on the beefing up of our police force. Our problems in this country touching on insecurity are not external, but internal. We need to considerably cut down the budget for the Ministry of State for Defence and transfer it to the Provincial Administration, so that we can be 2454 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 11, 2007 able to have adequate policing. To increase the number of police is only one of the solutions to our problems. We need those policemen to be properly trained. We need those policemen to be given continuous training on how to handle and combat the ever changing faces of crime. We need to give mobility to those policemen. We need to arm those policemen properly. We need to train those policemen in intelligence gathering, so that they can be able to infiltrate the cells of the criminals and deal with them from within. It is disheartening to see a policeman walking in the alleys of Nairobi carrying a massive gun called G3, which cannot be used to tackle sophisticated criminals carrying dangerous weapons like AK-47s and very high calibre pistols. This cannot help us in combating crime. Indeed, we have seen that criminals are so courageous now that even with the dead bodies count we are seeing, they are gunning down policemen in broad daylight. They are ambushing everybody. They have even killed a chief of the Minister for Administration and National Security and even slaughtered people in his backyard. This has to stop! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to ask the same question that Maj-Gen. Nkaisserry asked yesterday. When we passed the Bill for the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS) here, if you look at it, it says that they are to deal with issues of intelligence, internally and externally. Are they discharging their duties properly to help the Minister of State for Administration and National Security? While the police are busy running up and down with guns chasing criminals, the NSIS should help them in intelligence gathering. They should be able to help them in infiltrating criminal gangs, so that we can reverse this trend. I do not believe that our problem of crime is stemming from unemployment or poverty. We have neighbours who are a lot poorer, but who do not have this same problem! Uganda is not any richer than Kenya. It has an unemployment rate as high as that of Kenya, if not higher, and so is Tanzania. However, their gun crimes are, perhaps, just about 10 per cent of the gun-crimes we have in Kenya. As a leadership, from both sides of the House, we need to stand up and each one makes a contribution in one way or another on how to tackle crime. Our much talked about economic growth, which is in a very large percentage based on tourism, can easily be affected and undermined by this runaway crime. The moment a tourist boarding a plane to come to Kenya sees news flash on television in London, Moscow, China or wherever, of shoot-outs in Nairobi, they do not even know that Nairobi is not the Maasai Mara or Mombasa. For them, Kenya begins and ends in Nairobi. This has the impact that is so negative on our economy. Tourism, the world over, is a very fragile part of the economy. Look at Thailand. When they had a coup, their tourism flow dropped by 95 per cent in two months. This can happen to any other country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to urge the Minister to buy vehicles for the police. You have seen the vehicles the people are using, those Toyotas. There is no way they can chase criminals in sprint cars. We should do what is done in Italy. The fastest cars in Italy are Alfetas. That is what they have given the police to chase the Mafia . The police must constantly have better equipment than the criminals to be able to fight them. You cannot give a Toyota 1200 to a policeman and expect him to chase a criminal in a Range Rover! It cannot work! As a Parliament, we are ready to support the Minister fully by allocating him more money, and assisting by even cutting down on some Votes to pass the extra money to him. This is because the future of this country, the success of any other department, sector and Ministry is dependent on what we do with security. I would also like to mention the issue of the skirmishes and massacres going on in the Rift Valley. I have said this to the Minister on the Floor of this House and in private, that when you have a Provincial Police Officer (PPO) based in Nakuru, without a full-time helicopter, how do you expect him to tackle murders in Suguta Marmar? I want the Ministry to budget, even if it is not in this Budget, to make sure that in volatile areas like the Rift Valley, the police are equipped with helicopters. This will help them to track down cattle rustlers and criminals. They will also help July 11, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2455 them arrive at the scenes of crime on time and gather information much quicker. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the PPO in Nakuru will take two days to reach Lodwar by road. It will take him two days to reach Loitokitok by road, yet these areas are in the same province. The North Eastern Province, with the terrain that we have--- I want to urge the Minister to budget and make sure that, at least, every provincial headquarters is equipped with, among other things, a helicopter for easier movement of the police to tackle crime. Last but not least, I want to urge the Minister to improve the housing facilities for the police, so that they can also work from a point of comfort. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with those few remarks, I beg to support."
}