Police bosses to move to new office

By Cyrus Ombati

Naiobi, Kenya: The Inspector General of Police and his two deputies are from Monday expected to move to a new office at the Office of the Prime Minister along Harambee Avenue.

The three have been allocated the third floor of the building to help them manage the service well in a co-ordinate manner.

Officials said Mr David Kimaiyo and his deputies, Grace Kaindi for regular police and Samuel Arachi for Administration Police was informed of the move last Friday and efforts to make the office habitable were being done on Sunday.

“They are aware for now. The PM’s office decided to move some officials from the floor to accommodate them because they had been operating from funny offices,” said an officer aware of the move.

It is not clear if the officers will sit in the office for the rest of their term. Kaindi and Arachi are yet to be sworn into office.

Kimaiyo has been operating from tiny office he previously held at the Kenya National Focal Point where he was the director since December 24 when he was sworn into office, which insiders said had affected his operations.

Kaindi had moved there too after she was gazetted as the DIG almost a week ago while Arachi remained at Office of the President (OP).

OP has been blamed for failing to allocate the new commanders an office in time despite the fact that the changes had been foreseen.

Kimaiyo had demanded that he be accommodated together with his two deputies as part of the process of integration. He said the envisaged police reforms call for integration of both police services hence need for them to work together.

The swearing in ceremony of the deputies has been in limbo after the PM objected to their gazettement citing integrity issues raised on some of the officials and argued they cannot be entrusted to oversee reforms in the service.

 The complaint of the integrity came out of a report by Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA), which accused Mr Francis Muhoro, the new Director of Criminal Investigations of being unfit to hold the position.

But the National Police Service Commission dismissed the IPOA’s move and recommendations on Muhoro saying the authority has no such mandates.

“IPOA has mandate to receive complaints from the public against police and police against police and forward their reports to police for action and not on what they did,” he said.

The commission said IPOA has no vetting authority over any appointments and redeployment within the police.

It added the authority has no oversight authority over the management of the police and urged IPOA to focus on their mandates and stop causing confusion in the service.