Aging police constables will be smiling all the way to the bank after their employer rolled out reforms to address their plight.
About 500 police constables above the age of 50 will be promoted in reforms aimed at tackling stagnation and inequality in the service.
A constable is the junior-most officer in the Kenya Police Service — ranked at the bottom of a 13-tier structure which is headed by a Deputy Inspector General.
An action plan by the National Police Service Commission (NPSC) obtained by the media shows that aging constables without disciplinary cases will benefit from the promotions set to be concluded by July 17, a move that will help them boost their pension worth ahead of their retirement at 60.
“We want to set a very clear roadmap that will offer us a foundation on which all of our current 101,288 police officers will enjoy measurable welfare, conducive work environment, facilitation and equipping while at the same time addressing all the challenges that have made our face look bad to our public,” NPSC chairman Eliud Kinuthia told a local publisher in an interview.
Transferred
And in another gesture aimed at boosting fairness in the service, half of officers who have served for more than 10 years in hardship areas will be transferred to other stations.
Mr Kinuthia said the promotions would be structured to benefit all officers drawn from the Administration Police Service (APs), the Kenya Police Service and the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI).
“The planned promotions will be aimed to heal the acrimonious rift that occurred in the recent regular police and Administration Police merger where the latter felt cheated since it had more senior ranks that were demolished in the process that left the service deeply divided,” Mr Kinuthia said.
As part of the changes, several posts were abolished — ending decades of parallel command in the APs, regular police and DCI.
Posts abolished include the AP regional commander, regular police regional commander, DCI regional commander, county coordinating commander, regular police county commander, AP county commander and DCI county commander.
Overall, more than 24,572 AP officers were marked to join the 39,680 regular police in General Duties (GD) — raising the overall number of officers in GD to 64,252. The GDs were previously a preserve for the regular police. Officers in GD focus on public safety and security.
New formula
Mr Kinuthia said a new formula would also be introduced to ensure balance in appointing Officers Commanding Stations (OCSs) on whose shoulders the merger placed accounting authority.
“This is to make sure there is balance between those to be appointed to the position from the AP and the regular as well as from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.
“This will play fidelity to new harmonised command structure under the reorganisation framework to make sure all the departments have a fair share of the OCS appointments,” he said.
