Insecurity blamed on foreigners

Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang’ has blamed the high number of undocumented foreigners for the insecurity in the country.

He told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that Kenya is under pressure from the international community to continue hosting refugees, yet they are a security threat.

“The debate I have had is that all these refugees should go home, because they are the cause of all the trouble we have. That is the view of the Internal Security ministry,” Mr Kajwang’ said.

“You never know whether they were combatants. You never know whether they are the ones who have come with small arms. You never know whether they are not the ones filtering into our cities and causing chaos. The policy should be that we take them back home,” he said.

The minister said whenever that suggestion is made, organisations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees put pressure on Kenya to continue keeping the foreigners.

Committee chairman Adan Keynan said Kenya is, therefore, suffering from insecurity as a result of being a responsible member of the international community.

Kamukunji MP Yusuf Hassan was critically injured in the latest grenade attack in Eastleigh last Friday evening.

Mr Kajwang’ said underfunding of law enforcement agencies was also to blame for the insecurity in the country.

The bottom line, he said, is that Parliament has to force the government to allocate the necessary money to the Internal Security ministry to employ and adequately deploy more police officers.

MPs on the committee investigating the killing of police officers in Baragoi and the recent killing of members of the Kenya Defence Force in Garissa lamented that the government had not done enough to address insecurity.

Mr Kajwang’ admitted some immigration officers are corrupt and that this issue needs to be dealt with.

Mr Keynan said MPs would only agree to go on their Christmas break if there is enough money allocated to the Internal Security docket in the Supplementary Budget Estimates.

“We want to see a supplementary budget tailor-made for the mobilisation of homeland security. Without this we’ll not go (on the break) next week,” Mr Keynan said.