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| The Kenya Prisons boss Isiah Osugo, flanked by the PS office of the vice president Ludeki Chweya the man in charge of finances. |
Corrupt practices in Kenya seem to be gaining even more ground despite the fact that Kenya as a country is making serious efforts in an attempt to eradicate the vice from our midst by installing the right men and women into positions of authority. The Kenya Prison Services has been embroiled in corruption for a long time but we at theweeklyvision will not bury our heads in the sand and wish the vice to just melt away or just disappear into thin air, we must expose all ugly practices from the Kenyan society. In 2006 the former Vice-President and Minster for home affairs Moody Awori tabled in Parliament a list of 204 people said to have been allocated the controversial Kitale Prison land measuring 2,094 acres more than two decades ago. The beneficiaries were mainly top officials in the former President Moi's administration. The land was subdivided into 204 parcels of land and distributed to the beneficiaries.
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| A Prisons Dog |
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| A Junior prisons officer, hard work little pay, does he look happy? |
A senior Prisons officer
The allottees, Mr Awori said, include politicians, former diplomats, an ex-judge, military and police officers, Parastatal heads as well as provincial and district commissioners.
Come the year 2010 the Kenya Prisons top men and women came up with another grand project, one that, it seems was crafted to siphon cash from the long suffering Kenyan tax payer.On paper the idea was popular with some junior officers. Ksh. 40 Million was set aside for the project. Fifty officers were picked to undergo Dog handling courses at the Langata Police dogs handling unit.The course went on smoothly for three months and the fifty officers and fifty dogs graduated successfully.
Later on some officers and the dogs are picked for a further three months training in Dog sniffing course, now this is the point at which problems started to mount. The officers were denied pay for the duration of their stay in camp.They were advised to spend their own money on food,lodgings and transport for those who were traveling into Nairobi from far off posts. There was one officer from Shimo la Tewa, one from Nyeri, two from Kibos two from Kodiaga and two from Kakamega the rest were Nairobi inhabitants. The officers who came in from out of Nairobi were entitled to night out and transport allowances, that has never been paid. Three months into the end of training the officers are a bitter lot. The man in charge of the trainings Mr. King'oo, who also happens to be the director of operations at the prisons headquarters in Nairobi says he has nothing to say about the whole issue. When he was confronted by his juniors over non payment, he decided to release Ksh.1,500 to each one of them, it never pleased them at all.The big question most of the officers are now asking is, where is the PS Mr. Ludeki Chweya? As the chief accounting officer in the Office of the vice president he must tell us what happened. Are we going to be paid? And when will that be? When the graduation ceremony was conducted, Mr. Isiah Osugo was out of the country on official engagement, Mr. King'oo is said to have said that he was acting under his boss's instructions. neither his PA nor the PA in the office of the vice president was willing to say much.
Normally after dogs undergo training, they are sent for exposure trips outside of the training environment to test their adaptability to other areas, and in this case the fifty officers plus the fifty dogs were slated for a visit to Mombasa for this purpose, instead only three senior officers, SSP Kilundu, CO 11 Tanaka and Mr. King'oos' PA a Mr.Hassan left for Mombasa of course without any dogs. They went to Mombasa, borrowed three dogs from the police at Makupa police station, posed for pictures with the dogs and happily came back to Nairobi, mission accomplished. They claimed Khs.5000 night-out purportedly for each of the fifty officers and Ksh.3000 for the 50 dogs that were meant to have traveled to Mombasa.
When we contacted the PR in the office of the vice president to shade more light on this issue he declined to make any comments, we also contacted the PA to the prisons boss who too declined to comment. Now junior officers are crying for assistance, will someone listen?
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