The government through the Ministry of Interior led by CS kindiki has announced the introduction of a new programme that will see citizens and security officials receive financial rewards in the war against banditry.

While on a visit to Laikipia County, the interior CS Kithure Kinidki stated that officers and members of the public would get cash rewards if they helped the government catch up with executors of banditry. 

According to the CS, the Ministry of Interior will soon publish the profiles of some of the most notorious bandits, their ringleaders and financiers, as well as the profiteers of the dreaded criminal network, which has claimed hundreds of lives, destroyed livelihoods and stunted socioeconomic development in the North Rift and some parts in the country.

“Henceforth, the government will financially reward all security officers and wananchi, who, through collaboration and proactive information-sharing, will facilitate 100% recovery of stolen livestock and the arrest of the remnants of the banditry underworld. CS Kindiki Kithure has announced that the strategic move is aimed at incentivizing the ongoing war against violent livestock rustling and other related crimes.”

The CS also sounded a warning to criminal enterprises that are responsible for the deaths and displacement of people as a result of banditry.

“Cattle rustling in Northern Kenya has over the years become an organised criminal enterprise responsible for deaths, destitution and displacement. Its impacts are severe.

“It deprives pastoral communities of their economic mainstay and aggravates the conditions of poverty in the rangelands, fuelling communal grievances and revenge attacks.

“To dismantle the infrastructure of cattle rustlers and facilitators, the Government is sustaining the war on banditry and its perpetrators, enablers, benefactors and beneficiaries by making banditry a painful venture, ensuring recovery of stolen livestock and rewarding facilitators of recoveries.”

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