NAKURU, Kenya, Feb 13 – Nakuru City residents have listed insecurity, poor health services, poor drainage system and perennial water shortage among the leading threats affecting their lives.
The residents said knife-wielding gangsters were freely roaming and attacking people in broad day-light in with with little or not no action from the security forces.
Different speakers at a citizen assembly organised by Uraia Trust at AIC Shabaab in Nakuru Town West, said residents were living in fear of being attacked or killed by the gangs.
The citizen assemblies dubbed ‘Agenda Yetu’ are being implemented by Uraia Trust in collaboration with Center for Transformational Leadership (CTL).
Residents said the organised criminal gangs had affected businesses in the estates because shop owners had to close operations as early as 6:00pm.
“Efforts to report them to the police are unproductive because the criminals are only held briefly, sometimes for less than an hour before being released back to the society with complete information of who reported them.
“People are afraid of sharing information with the security officers because secrecy is not guaranteed, these criminals might attack those who dare report them,” said a resident.
Nakuru City has been home to some of the most ruthless criminals gangs that started out as mobile phone money fraudsters and morphed into knife and machete wielding criminals.
In the run-up to the 2022 General elections, the gangs caused chaos and fear in the two sub-counties and the neighbouring Bahati constituency as they targeted women and girls, subjecting them to sexual abuse before killing and setting their bodies on fire.
During the Agenda Yetu meeting, residents urged the county and national government to collaborate in ending the criminal activities.
They blamed the county government for lack of street lights which created conducive environment for the gangsters to operate.
On health, the residents blamed reduced budgetary allocation to the department, under-staffing, poor hospital management and lack of equipment and medicine for the poor service delivery.
Uraia Trust Civic Education Manager, Hellen Mudora said the citizen assemblies were meant to give citizens chance to discuss issues affecting them and their desired development projects ahead of the August 2027 General elections.
“Most of the times, politics are centred around an elite or an ethnic community or other diverse things instead of being on issues affecting the citizenry,” she said.
She added that Uraia Trust and its partners were promoting issue based politics by ensuring that the agendas were from the citizen to the political class for governance.
“Citizens can be taking up issues with their elected leaders and the government of the day to ensure that they get services as per their needs, let the people develop the manifestos instead of politicians imposing their agendas on them,” she said.
Mudora noted that based on the meeting in Nakuru City, Uraia found out what the people of Nakuru Town East and Nakuru Town West identified as a priority issues.
“Elections are coming next year and it is good for people to be prepared so we start early since 2027 will be the calender for politicians and the voice of the people might be muzzled,” she said.
Mudora said Agenda Yetu was a Pilot project in seven counties,namely Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru, Tharaka Nithi, Muranga and Baringo.
“Based on the findings from the pilot project, the concept might be up-scaled to other counties so that people can start setting agendas for themselves and not let the politicians do it for them,” she finalised.
