The new Inspector General has demanded operational changes at the Police Air Wing when he visited their headquarters on Wednesday after he was met with rude facts of the rot in the unit.
In what was described as a tip of the iceberg as far as problems at the Police Air Wing are to go by, the police airwing is shrouded in secrecy under the guise of national security but the so-called secrecy has sunk the unit to its knees with massive irregularities that have compromised the police force.
In June 2018 Matiangi launched three new choppers among them two AgustaWestland AW139 helicopters- one configured for VIP use and another for advanced mission operations.
The three choppers pushed the number of police helicopters in service to 11.
However, parliament had complained that the Interior ministry had procured them without approval. The committee on Security had stumbled upon the issue of the aircraft as they were investigating another matter at Wilson Airport.
But during the launch of the helicopters, something fishy arose, ministry top honchos and high-ranking police officers rode in a different helicopter, instead of one of the new ones they had come to launch, for a demonstration flight.
The reason at then, nobody knew but today deep revelations uncovered by the new inspector general has given a hint on the rot in the airwing unit.
Two of the aircraft have never left the ground and are just wasting away at the airport. Reason? They have not been cleared to fly within Kenya’s airspace. The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA), which is in charge of regulating the airspace, has declined to say why they could not clear the two planes.
“I can’t tell you because it is a government secret,” Gilbert Kibe, KCAA’s director general, told the Nation. The information available to the Nation, however, indicates that the National Police Service has been unable to get insurance for the two planes.
Without insurance, an aircraft cannot get a certificate of airworthiness and cannot be allowed to fly. Why the police bought aircraft that cannot be certified as airworthy is a mystery.
It is, however, said that KCAA is adamant that it cannot allow an uninsured aircraft to fly. This has put the Police Air Wing between a rock and a hard place.
To prove how cartels have rocked the boat further towards the storm, In November 2016, the Director National Police Air Wing wrote to the Inspector General asking for payment amounting to Sh21,379,288 for training offered to pilots by three firms.
“Forwarded here please find the attached vouchers being cost of training expenses for pilots from this unit.
The training was approved by the departmental training committee as per the attached minutes,” said the letter signed by Evans Ochieng on behalf of the Air Wing commander, Mr Rodgers Mbithi.
The Nation has reliably established that two of the companies — Ventura Aviation, which was paid Sh14,757,288 and West Rift Aviation, which received Sh1,423,000 — do not offer any aviation training. In fact, they were not on the list of accredited aviation schools issued through an advertisement by KCAA in the newspapers last Friday.
More revelations prove that the engines of the 5Y-DCI that crashed in Boni forest had failed. Interestingly, the chopper was among three that had been shipped out to the Czech Republic a few months before the crash for refurbishment.
It is still unclear why the police would ship a brand new helicopter for refurbishment shortly after buying it, only for the engines to fail a few months later
. Three other helicopters — 5Y-EDM, 5Y-STA and 5Y-SFA, which were also recently shipped out for a complete overhaul — have been grounded.
The unit once bought faulty rotor blades at a cost of Sh13 million but the blades only lasted 27 flight hours before needing replacement. The parts were for one of the MI-17 helicopters, registration number 5Y-EDM.