OCPD Musa Kongoli and NPSC chairman Johnstone Kavulundi with Commisioner Mary Owour tour old police houses in Kisumu.
Policemen have been asked to live with their female colleagues as housing crisis hits the service. In the unprecedented move causing murmurs of discontent, CID officers were recently ordered to make immediate arrangements to accommodate their new roommates.
Out of 294 officers instructed to share rooms, 148 will involve male and female officers living in the same rooms of police rented houses spread across the city. The order affects officers of the rank of constable to corporal. Many of the officers, especially those picked to share rooms with members of the opposite sex, maintain they are not comfortable with that arrangement.
Everyone affected “I have been living alone in a two-bedroomed house but now my new roommate will be a young female officer. She will occupy one of the bedrooms while the kitchen, washroom and sitting room will be shared. I don’t know how this will work. It is strange,” said one of the officers.
“I know of an officer who has a disabled child and now she has been given a male colleague to share her house. The random allocation without gender and disability considerations isn’t fair,” an officer told The Nairobian. Out of Sh26.1 billion set aside for the Police Service last year, Sh1.3 billion will be spent on housing. Inspector General David Kimaiyo was lobbying for his department to be allocated about Sh150 billion.
“There is a police housing project that has been completed or is underway in every county in the country. Poor housing was identified as one of the demoralising factors in the Police Service, and we are doing everything to improve on that,” Kimaiyo was quoted saying while supporting the need for police to be funded adequately.
The National Task Force on Police Reforms headed by (Rtd) Judge Philip Ransley found out that in the wake of an acute housing problem, some police houses were being occupied by wananchi. The task force recommended an audit of houses occupied by non-officers and repossession of those with civilians.
Recently, some junior officers claimed their bosses were occupying more than one house. When reached, police spokesman Masoud Mwinyi admitted they have been trying to address the problem of double-allocation of houses to superiors.
Stiff resistance was obvious, though. It also emerged that the same bosses were renting out such houses to civilians, prompting National Police Service Commission chairman Johstone Kavuludi to issue threats of disciplinary action against them.
“The Police Service appreciates the steps made by the government and it is an abuse of that privilege for any officer to rent out a house he or she has been allocated,” he said.
He urged officers with alternative accommodation to contact Kimaiyo so their houses can be assigned to other officers. “There are many officers without descent housing and it is only fair that if any of you has an alternative accommodation you should alert Kimaiyo so that he assigns the premises to another person,” he added.
Packed to the brim The Ransley Team proposed that the government should consider providing adequate housing allowances to enable police officers to rent accommodation within the community. The retired judge said if police officers live with civilians, this would support community policing programme.
“Government should provide adequate budgetary provisions to facilitate the acquisition of adequate housing for the Police Service,” read the Ransley report that was presented to former President Kibaki in October 2009. Officers forced to share houses with members of the opposite sex complained to The Nairobian their privacy will be abused in the event the directive is not reviewed.
“Apart from being a police officer who is supposed to obey all orders, we are human beings whose rights to privacy should be respected. For sure, this house-sharing thing will break some families besides breeding suspicion and animosity among us,” said an officer.
Even those of the same sex termed the move an intrusion to privacy, arguing that they had families and therefore the space was not enough for additional accommodation of “strangers.” “My family lives here, my children go to school here. I have a house help who shares one of the bedrooms with the children. So where will they sleep in order to create space for another man who could be having a family too?” posed an angry officer.
Hudson Gumbihi
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