Nairobi County is betting on a name change to restore professionalism into its inspectorate officers, popularly known as kanjos.
The county askaris will henceforth be known as county constables, as part of ongoing reforms of the unit which has been plagued with bad reputation.
City Hall Security and Compliance Chief Officer Mark Leleruk said the move is part of giving the officers respectable titles in a bid to professionalise the department.
He admitted that the level of professionalism among the more than 2,000 officers is low, hence the need to replace the old titles.
This, said Dr Leleruk, is intended to rebrand the unit and get rid of the culture associated with corruption and brutality that the officers have been known for.
Already, over 1,000 officers have been receiving training by the National Police Service (NPS) at Kiganjo Police Training College and the Administration Police Training College Embakasi.
The new development comes at a time when the officers have once again been in the headlines for assaulting an ACK senior clergyman two weeks ago.
“We need to professionalise the sector. We are equally embarrassed. The level of professionalism is low; we admit it. We need to replace the current titles and call them constables and other respectable titles,” said Dr Leleruk.
He added that they have embarked on changing the image of the unit by giving the officers new uniforms and address their understanding of the law since the Nairobi City County Inspectorate Act, 2017 has never been made operational.
“We have revitalised the officers’ training school in Dagoretti which we will use to train the officers going forward,” he said.
The Dagoretti facility is a Sh200 million modern training school and will be dedicated to training the officers.
In June this year, the Governor Ann Kananu’s administration inked a deal with NPS to train more than 1,000 of its inspectorate officers.
The four-month training was targeted at introducing a new culture of professionalism, discipline and integrity into the unit.
The training of the enforcement services personnel include that of enforcement officers and traffic marshals who will be in charge of public transport and safety, manning high class metro transport parking bays and termini, dealing with public safety, safety of markets and promoting trade and industry.
At the end of the exercise, the new enforcement officers, along with the re-trained inspectorate personnel, will be mandated with patrolling city streets to rid them of hawkers, parking boys, drug peddlers and goons who have taken over public toilets.
