Visiting Haiti Prime Minister Garry Conille Saturday October 12 visited various police installations in Nairobi as part of his trip to Kenya.
Conille was in Nairobi to push for fast deployment of more police to Haiti to help in combating gangs.
He visited police headquarters’ communication and command centre and held a meeting with Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja.
He was later taken to the Administration Police Training Campus in Embakasi to witness ongoing pre-deployment training of the personnel.
The personnel are from General Service Unit, Administration Police’s Border Patrol Unit, Rapid Deployment Unit and Anti Stock Theft Unit, which are paramilitary units with wide combat training.
They will be deployed to Haiti to help in combating gangs there.
Conille praised the police response to last week’s massacre that left at least 115 people dead.
“The police and the (Kenyan) contingent were able to deploy by road within – really, virtually – hours to make sure that the city in question was quickly protected,” Conille said.
Kenya will send 600 more police officers to Haiti in November to bolster an international anti-gang mission, President William Ruto said on Friday during a visit by the Haitian prime minister intended to speed up deployments to the force.
At least 10 countries have promised to send a total of about 2,900 troops to participate in the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support (MSS).
But only about 430 have deployed since the U.N.-authorised mission got underway in June, nearly 400 of them from Kenya.
Heavily armed gangs, which control most of the capital Port-au-Prince, have continued to gain territory.
Last week, members of the Gran Grif gang carried out one of the country’s deadliest attacks in recent years, killing at least 115 people in a farming region, according to a local mayor.
Ruto said the mission was improving security in Haiti, calling the fight against gangs “the battle that we can win”.
He said the additional 600 officers committed by Kenya were in training and would be ready for duty next month.
Over 700,000 people in Haiti have fled their homes and over five million are going hungry – nearly half the population, according to the United Nations.
Last month, the U.N. Security Council unanimously authorised extending the MSS’s mandate by another year.
A U.S. push for a plan to turn it into a U.N. peacekeeping mission was dropped from the resolution due to opposition from Russia and China.
So far, the mission has made little progress helping Haiti restore order with only about 400 mostly Kenyan police officers on the ground.
Haiti is reeling after members of the Gran Grif gang stormed through the town of Pont-Sonde in the western Artibonite region early on Thursday October 3, killing at least 115 people, including infants, and forcing over 6,000 residents to flee.
The massacre caused widespread shock even in a country that has grown accustomed to outbreaks of violence, and where the national police force is outgunned and understaffed.
Gunmen invaded another town north of Haiti’s capital on Thursday October 10, shooting at people and setting homes on fire, just a week after a massacre killed at least 115 people in the country’s central region.
The UN-authorised mission that is led by Kenya faces a funding inadequacy as member states who committed to contribute $ 84 million (Sh10.8 billion) have so far contributed $67 million (Sh8.6 billion).
This has delayed many plans on the ground.
The said contributions from member states have been made by through the UN Trust Fund for the MSS.
The mission is expected to comprise up to 2,500 police personnel, deployed in phases, at an annual cost of approximately $600 million.
