Centre to monitor police recruitment launched

The Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution in partnership with Usalama Reforms Forum and other NGOs has established a national “Police Recruitment Watch Centre” to monitor the national police recruitment exercise.

Of specific scrutiny will be the integrity, credibility and gender equity of the recruitment drive taking place Wednesday in 286 centres across the country.

The centre is based at the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights offices with a team of gender, policing, legal and social experts who will offer technical support and relay any reported challenges immediately to the media and concerned partners.

It will have a direct contact with the National Recruitment Committee through the Police Reforms Implementation Committee and constantly update the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission on emerging issues throughout the recruitment exercise.

According to Philip Onguje, the coordinator of Usalama Reforms, the partners have also set up an SMS only line: 0726 777 677 for members of the public to report any complaints and emerging issues to help enable immediate response.

Apart from the centre, the partners will send out monitors in all the 47 counties to cover at least 200 of the designated recruitment centres.

The monitors will seek to know whether the number of persons to be selected in each centre shall be announced at the beginning of the exercise and the successful recruits immediately informed at the end of the exercise and whether there will be mechanisms for addressing complaints.

Some 7,000 recruits are expected to be listed into the regular and administration police forces in the first joint exercise based on the recommendations of the Ransley Task Force on police reforms.

It is a deviation of the past practices which went on for days and probably the last before coming into being of the Police Service Commission, which will be tasked with the recruitment as outlined in the new Constitution.