CS Mudavadi Explains How Govt is Changing KDF and Police Recruitment Process

Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi has outlined the government’s plan to digitise the police recruitment process to curb corruption and make the exercise more efficient.

Speaking during the launch of the Kakamega Polytechnic digital hub on Monday, Mudavadi stated that plans were underway to ensure all government recruitments are done online as in the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA).

“We want to move very progressively such that even when it will come to recruiting people in the security sector like the police, we will want the first applications to be online so that we minimise the contact between personnel,” Mudavadi said.

This, he said, would greatly solve the corruption epidemic in the recruitment process where a majority have reported being extorted off thousands of shillings and still ending up without the job.

“We want to get rid of a situation where 4000 people show up on a field and run with some selling land and cattle then they end up left out and heartbroken,” Mudavadi explained.

Adding to the police reforms being targeted for digitisation, Mudavadi stated that the government would also be changing how sensitive crimes are reported to police stations.

In instances like gender-based violence (GBV), he said that the biggest challenge in solving them was the failure of the victims to report due to fear of the perpetrators.

To curb this and improve reporting, the government is supposedly in the process of developing systems to promote anonymity in reporting.

“One of the biggest problems is intimidation and fear of reporting when there are cases of this nature,” Mudavadi stated.

“Through technology, we can develop a coalition where through the privacy of a place, issues around gender-based violence can be brought to the attention of the authorities so that proper action can be taken against these fellows who disturb our communities.”

To spread the technology into all areas of police work, Mudavadi also added that police stations will be included in the 74,000 public institutions being targeted to be digitised by the Ministry of ICT and Digital Economy.

“Going forward we want to introduce digital OBs so that there will not be an opportunity for a page or two to be torn from the report,” Mudavadi declared.