NAIROBI, Kenya,, Jul 5- Bribery and police inaction are still rampant within the National Police Service(NPS), a new survey has revealed.
According to the Police Service Delivery Performance Survey 2021, twenty eight percent of the respondents reported dissatisfaction with police service, saying they were asked for a bribe.
Some 11 percent of the respondents reported police inaction.
The survey was launched during this year’s Inspector General of police conference that was geared towards reviewing the state of security in the country amidst a global COVID-19 pandemic as well as fast approaching general elections in 2022.
The roadmap to 2022 elections has seen senior police officers across the country plan ahead of time to ensure the polls are conducted in a peaceful environment.
The survey pointed out that due to the vices within NPS, many citizens were discouraged from reporting any matter to the police.
Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i who was the chief guest during the conference said that police have a long way to go in ensuring Kenyans confidence in the service.
“We need to manage our officers better. The challenge we have is let us not run away from our responsibility when member of the public raise complaints, but we should respond to them,” Matiang’i said.
“Police unfriendliness was also another reason for dissatisfaction with the service for 9 percent of the respondents,” the survey revealed.
Another vice that seems to threaten the service is the increasing cases of indiscipline with CS Matiang’i calling on senior officers to mentor and guide newly recruited officers in the service.
“Where I think we have not done very well as senior officers is managing the troops. The junior officers who have been entrusted to us. A time has come that we need to be a bit more strict in terms of how we coordinate and organise the officers. We have to ensure that they are completely disciplined,” he said.
“Recently, we have noticed some challenges related to drunkenness and poor behaviour on some of our junior officers which we are dealing with. Why should I pretend here when you have been seeing clips doing rounds of officers who have one or the other challenge and this is related to personal challenges that we can resolve by knowing our officers?” he posed.
Incidents of police brutality and killings have recently also put the service in disrepute with police officers urged to actively engage members of the public in the event of a crisis that threatens the safety of communities.
Regarding to the killing of two people in Kisii County this past week, Matiang’i said the law will take its course.
“I want to commit to the public that we will act and take decisions in the direction that the investigation is going to show us. If there are officers who were involved in making mistakes, they will of course face the full force of the law,” he said.
Some 127 police station commanders (OCSs), 1811 police officers and 2244 covering the 47 counties took part in the study.
The performance survey also revealed police complaints handling and discipline was another area for improvement, with the study suggesting poor rating of police complaints handling. This scored 21 percent.
Police discipline scored 48 percent due to increased number of allegations and offences against police officers, the highest of which was disobeying lawful command (21percent), followed by police negligence in the performance of duty (21 percent), physical assault (16 percent) and harassment and intimidation (10 percent)
The survey also revealed that 63 percent of Kenyans were satisfied with services by the police. In 2019, only 29 percent of the respondents said they were satisfied with services rendered by the police.
Reasons for satisfaction with police services was largely attributed to the lack of a fee to obtain police forms or abstracts (54percent), followed by how police handled a matter (25percent), and being helpful, approachable and friendly at 13 percent.
Insufficient funding and delay on disbursement of funds is said to be a major reason for poor service delivery performance.
According to the survey, the Authority to Incur Expenditure (AIE) allocation to police divisions only covered 48 percent of the cost of running over 1400 police stations.
“Nearly 800 police stations are yet to be funded under the AIE allocations to police divisions,” the survey revealed.
Allocation of funds to all police stations was recommended to boost service delivery
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