Charles Owino differs with CS Matiang’i on police recruitment grades
Police Spokesman Charles Owino on Wednesday differed with his boss, Interior Cabinet Secretary Dr Fred Matiang’i, on the eligibility of recruits into the National Police Service.
In an interview on Citizen tv Wednesday, Owino defended the move to recruit those who got a minimum KCSE grade of D Plus, because officers with higher grades would return to colleges and acquire degrees and thereafter seek promotions, hence jeopardizing service delivery.
“We have a challenge when we employ every policeman with grade C plus and above because they go back to school, they get their degrees and then they come back and say that they do not want to serve at a certain level. It is important we get officers who have C plain, C minus and D plus,” said Owino.
He added that it is not possible to promote every officer at the same time adding that all they need are just intelligent officers, not necessarily measured by academic qualification.
According to Owino, some officers did not acquire the best of grades because of the environment that they studied in and not making them not good enough in their academics.
“They probably went to schools without a laboratory, where their teachers were untrained but they still managed to get a grade C plain. This is an intelligent person. There is a lot that is involved, not just of students scoring good grades, but also being practical and a hard worker,” he added.
His sentiments come just days after Interior CS Matiang’i said the qualification for recruitment into the police service should be raised from D plus to improve service delivery.
Speaking during a graduation ceremony for 46 prosecutors at the Prosecutor Training Institute in Loresho, he questioned the service’s capacity to deal with emerging crimes, saying Kiganjo Police Training College graduates were no match for tech-savvy criminals.
“This is why I have been fighting that we look at the cut-off point of the people we are admitting. Surely, if we are admitting you with a D plus then we are telling you to go to the complex science of analysing blood and preparing a document that the DPP is going to use in court to prove murder, are we serious honestly? Are we serious?” he posed.