Operation Has Improved Security Situation in Turkana – Kindiki

The security situation in Turkana County has considerably improved since the commencement of ‘Operation Maliza Uhalifu’ a year ago.

The recruitment, training and deployment of National Police Reservists (NPRs) has also significantly augmented the efforts of the formed up units of the security agencies and resulted to normalcy on the Kitale-Lodwar Highway and several other areas within Turkana County that were experiencing insecurity.

However, according to Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki, occasional attacks in the areas contiguous to the Turkana-West Pokot border and at a few points near Kenya’s border with Uganda and South Sudan remains an outstanding assignment, which the Government aims at addressing.

He made the remarks Thursday March 28 when he held a status of County Security Appraisal Forum with the Turkana County Security and Intelligence Agency Heads at Lodwar Town.

This was aimed at generating appropriate interventions for completing the task.

The area is among those that have been facing challenges in terms of banditry attacks.

This has displaced many, left others dead and injured.

Elsewhere, two wanted bandits were arrested in Elgeyo Marakwet while headed for a mission.

Two others managed to escape amid an operation to get them, police said.

More than 70 people have been killed in separate attacks in the region in the past months amid calls to address the menace of banditry.

Kindiki has been leading the operations in the area vowing to end the menace.

Kindiki said cattle rustling in Northern Kenya has over the years become an organised criminal enterprise responsible for deaths, poverty and displacement.

“Its impacts are severe. It deprives pastoral communities of their economic mainstay and aggravates the conditions of poverty in the rangelands, fuelling communal grievances and revenge attacks,” he said.

To dismantle the infrastructure of cattle rustlers and facilitators he said, the government is sustaining the war on banditry and its perpetrators, enablers, benefactors and beneficiaries by making banditry a painful venture, ensuring recovery of stolen livestock and rewarding facilitators of recoveries.