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{
    "id": 783193,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/783193/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 25,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Mohammed Lokiru",
    "speaker_title": "The Member for Turkana East",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13498,
        "legal_name": "Lokiru Ali Mohammed",
        "slug": "lokiru-ali-mohammed"
    },
    "content": " Thank you Hon. Deputy Speaker for allowing me to second this Motion. First, I wish to thank the people of Turkana East for electing me to represent them in this House. I have been in the National Police Service Commission for 20 years before I joined this House. It is the people of Turkana East who thought it better for me to come here. They knew the suffering police officers are going through. My constituency is one of those which lose a lot of officers. When you hear of Kasarani where 29 officers were killed, it is in my constituency. When you hear of the Suguta Valley, where around 40 officers were killed, it is in my constituency. The NPSC recruits officers from the entire country. It recruits from each constituency. When officers die in the line of duty, it is our constituents that usually cry. As politicians, we always rush to the burials and condemn the Inspector-General of Police (IG). What we have never done or realised is that it is not the IG who legislates. It is not the IG who allocates money to the NPSC. If you see how these officers are housed, it is bad. I happened to be an in-charge in a station called Khorof Harar. In Khorof Harar, officers live in tinned houses. They call them unihuts. You cannot stay in these houses during daytime. They are too hot. At night, they are too cold. They usually house snakes and animals at night. One day when I went to visit the cells, I happened to see a prisoner just lying down and there was a snake nearby. I was scared. I knew the next thing they would not say was that the police had not prepared a good cell for these people. They would have sacked me immediately because they have said I have put a person there and he has been bitten by a snake. These officers do not choose where to go. They are not represented even in the NPSC. The IG and his deputies are the ones who represent police officers there. The NPSC uses all its time concentrating in investigating how a police officer acquired a bicycle. How police officers live is never considered. The NPSC has never considered how children of these officers go to school. Police officers started going back to school to get degrees for them to be renumerated well. Now, they are even condemned for that. The NPSC is saying that one will not be given that extra allowance even with a degree. How will you motivate the officers to go to school? The NPSC is a commission provided in the Constitution to defend police officers and to see how they their living conditions can be improved. They are saying that if you go to the field and you are shot at or disabled, you will not be exempted from paying taxes. These officers do not go to the field to protect their property. They go there to protect the lives of Kenyans. We sometimes say that police officers are brutal, but these people are frustrated. That is why you see many suicide cases in the police force. When a police officer goes to his house which he is sharing with his colleague and is frustrated, a small quarrel prompts him to kill the other or himself. This House should wake up and defend our police officers. They cannot demonstrate like other people. In the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), workers are represented from the bottom. You will find magistrates are represented in the JSC. Judges of the High Court and the Court of Appeal (CoA) are also represented. Officers that work in hardship areas like North Eastern are junior officers. Nobody cares about them. They are not even paid their hardship allowances. They are not even paid their night out allowance when they go outside. These The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}