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    "id": 543869,
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    "content": "be an elder and I do not know whether we shall be able to handle them in terms of remuneration. Perhaps it would be necessary that the elders identify one of them to be the chairman so that he can be the one in charge. Public participation is very important in this exercise. It is also important that the relationship between this elder and the village administrator is defined so that their roles do not conflict. In fact, they should be complementary because the village administrator will be recruited by the county government. It is important that at the village level, they should work closely. In addition to this, the fact that we have not recognized village elders and we even seem not to recognize the chiefs and the assistant chiefs, most of them are idle and they do not know what their roles are. It is very important that we redefine their roles clearly because at the village level, it will be difficult to restrict a chief to national functions. You cannot tell, for example, the chief not to act when there is vandalism on a water project in the village. A chief in some cases is not supposed to constitute a committee because that is now a function of the county government and it is no go zone. I think when we get to that level, we should have somebody who cuts across national and village duties. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the elders, chiefs, assistant chiefs and county commissioners are without an enforcement arm because a greater part of their responsibility is dealing with criminals and dispute resolution. I think at the moment, we have exposed them so much – they are very insecure and they cannot implement some of the programmes that they are supposed to implement because of fear of attack by criminals. You have often heard county commissioners threatening to sack chiefs because there is high intake of chang’aa in their areas, stock theft or presence of illegal arms and yet they do not have any security back up. Initially, the Administration Police who were known as tribal police were responsible for community policing and their commander was the chief. In fact, the chief is the one who identified them and recruited them from the community. They were trained and posted back to the same locations. At the moment, the Administration Police are carrying out duties like the other regular police officers. They are recruited and posted to other areas. In fact, Administration Police are not posted to their own areas and that is why the public view the security arms as consisting of persons who are strangers to them. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in the past, it was unheard of for the public to attack police officers because within that area were their boys and girls. The advantage of the Administration Police being posted to the local areas was because they knew the area since they had been born in that area. Even when livestock was stolen, perhaps some of it would be theirs and they would make sure to track the animals. If, for instance, livestock was stolen from Turkana and taken to the Pokot area, the police officers in Turkana did not need to cross the border. All they needed to do was to communicate with the other side to retrieve the animals. It is very important that the elders are appointed and given support in terms of police officers to reinforce their work. When it comes to qualifications – I had mentioned it earlier – an elder by virtue of being called an elder should not have an age limit. Somebody can become an elder at any age and should not retire until the community decides that you are no longer able to The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}