Kisumu County Commissioner Mohammed Maalim says the government appreciates the work of the organizations/OJWANG JOE
KISUMU, Kenya, Oct 15 – The government has ordered non state actors dealing with peace building initiatives along the troubled Kisumu-Nandi border to work closely with the local security apparatus.
Kisumu County Commissioner Mohammed Maalim says the government appreciates the work of the organizations.
Maalim says the government only steps in to ensure their work is coordinated to realize expected results.
“For us to have effective management along the border, we must have the element of coordination. We have made it very clear and it remains the stand of the government that all peace building related activities must be done through the county commissioner and by extension the county security intelligence committee,” he says.
Speaking to the press in Kisumu after chairing a security meeting along the border alongside their counterparts from Nandi, Maalim says the order is a government stand and must be respected.
The Commissioner says they have intelligence report that some of the organizations fuel the conflict along the border thus the need for coordination.
“Some of the organizations have been accused by the community for escalating the war at the border and we will not entertain that,” he says.
He says peace building needs a concerted effort and the civil society cannot work in isolation.
Maalim announced that there are effective government structures in place to address the underlying factors in the border and bring back the elusive peace.
He further announced that the government is mapping out all the civil society organizations, peace committees and other agencies actively involved in promoting peace in the area.
Maalim says this is also part of the preparations a head of the coming polls in 2017 to prevent any further flare up in the area.
“We are also putting in place what we call early warning and early response mechanisms to sustain the prevailing peace. We don’t want to be reactionary, we want to be proactive,” he said.
The Commissioner says his office will continuously organize peace meetings along the border until a long lasting peace prevails.
He says that a lot of efforts have been put in place to end the conflicts that is always triggered by theft of animals in the area.
“We have a number of police posts, a number of AP post, and we have also added more personnel to make sure we have a 24/7 patrols along the border,” he says.
Maalim announced that between June this year to the present month, they have been able to recover 37 herds of stolen cattle and eight suspects have been arraigned in court and charged with cattle theft.
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