After the Westgate shopping mall attack what next ?

 

As we all know nobody loves death be it natural or artificial as it were  , 21^st September  2013 remains a sad day in Kenya‘s history books, the day when those heinous beings that justifies Karl Marx statement that indeed religion is opium for the poor especially the ones prone to being brainwashed and that some extremist elements can wreck havoc coincidentally on World Peace day by mercilessly executing peace loving Kenyans, out to spend a weekend  with their loved ones grabbing a cappuccino, young children engaging in cooking festival amongst other noble notable reasonable duties.

After the inhumane attack it’s time we as country need to seriously relook at our policies and take stock regarding our Immigration, border and internal security, mismanagement of public offices either indirectly or directly, societal moral decay and reforms in our security agencies geared towards serving the taxpayers safety in shopping places, stadia’s, learning institutions, hospitals, trains, buses, hotels and other social places

The hard questions begin to ponder our souls have we as society becomes so capitalists that we can sell away our sovereignty, patriotism and morality? , is it because of the huge differential gaps in standards of living across the nation solely the  driving factor behind the sprawling young extremist recruitment in the slum areas  by the terrorist groups filling the income void occasioned by unemployment  ? Are we a victim of geo politics driven by resources and control of strategic countries by the so called super powers? Are our priorities as country geared towards elitist cum egoist goals at the expense of a broad spectrum, fortified and unified state, the questions are many but at this point we can only think of developing long lasting solutions which starts with me and you through digital and physical engagements as well through public and private sector partnerships in order to tame this inhuman externalities.

The way forward will involve players such as the insurance industry , lawmakers, Real estate owners, Hospitals , government agencies e.g. registrar of births, immigration, the traffic police , public and private learning institutions, shopping malls, security agencies inter alia. Let’s kick of with the:

Insurance sector ; plays big role in risk management, its one sector through which the various players such as A.K.I, I.R.A and R.B.A play a key role ranging from developing policies meant to prevent major occurrence of risks and imposition of heavy penalties for non compliance on  regulatory requirements through occasional surprise audits and any anomalies found in the regulatory reports for instance it’s high time the industry players adopted a digital platform for sharing information on Vehicles and their owners, adopt new policy clauses on the political, terrorism and sabotage covers requiring  disclosures of security measures put in place such Smoke ,bomb, anthrax and gas detectors for property that have American, British and Israel interests, property that are of economic importance to the government amongst other related institutions e.g. Ports Authority , airports, KRA and CBK however , parliament  needs to enact legislation that will see either zero rating of  car tracking devices and for insurance players to make it mandatory for each  car be fitted with it (form part of the insurance policy clauses), Equip the traffic police  with electronic gadgets that can enable mobile capturing and tracking vehicle details without stopping the said vehicle to supplement the cameras being installed in the city in order to curb crime rates thus reduce claim losses arising out of theft and hijackings .

Hospitals; Upon expectant mothers being blessed with  new born babies in the country they young ones should be assigned unique identity numbers and names allotted by parents electronically stored and shared on daily basis with the register of births and the immigration departments such that by the time one attains the majority age the authorities issuing identity cards have prior knowledge of the persons being issued with various statutory documents i.e. driving license, PIN number, NHIF, NSSF etc in short we should have one document this will curb cases of illegal immigrants, streamline profiling of Kenyans citizens on matters security amongst other issues.

Real Estate Developers and Land Lords; Though a bit complex landlords should be required to ask for employments letters from their tenants, identity cards, colored passports and or their sources of incomes and details of their immediate family members, cell phones however to achieve this, reforms in rental income filing to KRA by landlords such as  capturing  key statutory identity features of the tenants are necessary, it should be a requirement that key buildings associated with highly exposed foreigners and susceptible to terrorist threats deposit  their architectural designs with the NSIS  and subsequent changes and or partitions to the building subjected to same law. However the long term panaceas lie with the government floating a housing bond to supplement REITS and private developers in offering formal settlements country wide otherwise profiling of individuals living in slums areas is cumbersome it requires regular community policing ,another key factor lies in the threshold for approval of residential buildings that have no common areas and or social amenities should be controlled , its only through social places like community social halls, soccer fields that people get to know each other but not in apartments in a nutshell information comes to social places the more they diminish the more difficult it becomes to mine one.

Private Security Agencies; We do know that our G4S guys, Lavington security guards, Radar etc are not authorized gun handlers especially their employees deployed to guard shopping malls, schools, offices, residential houses etc, in my opinion given the sporadic shootings by teenagers in schools especially in the USA, that arouses the questions of gun control, I may be right or wrong but I tend to opine that they should either be absorbed or transformed into a special armed police body meant to specifically offer security in major shopping malls, stadia’s, schools, office place ,hospitals and  placed on a  government payroll and while at the same stakeholders should offer anti terror and safety security measures to its employees on regular basis this should form part of licence renewal requirements but at the same time allow for employers to claim the reimbursement under NITA rules formerly the Directorate of Industrial Training.

Reforming the police sector; The police units should not be seen as a preserve for those who scored low marks in high school and just because I can run faster does not mean I can dodge a bullet, our police force should be properly trained equipped with modern warfare techniques, properly remunerated and above all remain patriotic however iam told you don’t eat patriotism whose deficiency is sometimes as a result of low morale hence prone to bribery. High end terrorists by nature are well schooled individuals iam reminded that Osama was a trained engineer, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed one of the September 11 mastermind was a graduate of bachelor science in mechanical engineering attained from an American university Mr. President Uhuru be bold enough have graduates enroll for military for the sake of peace and stability in our country. Let’s have the SRF forces spread across the country in major towns for now the dissidents are fooling us with Nairobi, Mombasa and Northern Kenya how about the rest of the country, re engage retired military personnel on under cover surveillance .

Lastly this subject is wide we have not even covered schools, hotels and public transport sector remember the London underground transport bombing.  lets not turn a blind eye on the eyesore called terrorism lets  be our brothers keeper just like Abdul Haji during the westgate attacks.