Woes bedeviling the National Youth Service (NYS) piled up after 20,000 youths were sent home last month as a severe cash crunch bites at the institution. Barely a month after 10,000 recruits were sent home from training camps, last week another 10,000 of the servicemen and women walked out of NYS gates crestfallen shortly after being recalled from the slum upgrade projects.
The servicemen and women were to take up courses at NYS training units but that did not happen and they were surprised to be sent home without clear explanation. “They were told to go home and try their luck in the just concluded police recruitment exercise, that was despite the fact that we have a recruitment centre here,” said our source.
The recruitment, our source said, was marred by massive bribery as NYS senior officers demanded between Sh150,000 and Sh 200,000 from parents to help their sons and daughters secure a chance in the National Police Service. Reached for comment, Cabinet Secretary for Public Service, Youth and Gender Affairs Sicily Kariuki downplayed the crisis at NYS, insisting that the “government is fully aware of what is happening and is addressing it as a package.”
“The problem with the media is that they will always create a mountain out of a molehill. There is no crisis at NYS and the government has already put in place measures to address the entire problem,” Kariuki said. The move has also caused panic among civilians over the kind of insecurity posed by the development.
On Sunday, Bishop Cornelius Korir of the Catholic Diocese of Eldoret in Uasin Gishu county claimed that the youths, who have undergone military training at the Gilgil NYS Training Institute could pose a major security risk if left idle at home.
The first batch which was sent home were recruits who could not graduate despite overstaying in the training camps because there was no money to buy graduation uniforms let alone facilitating the cost of the elaborate pass-out ceremony.
NYS recruits take six months of training in camps before they pass-out. However, this was not the case for the 10,000, who are now at home. Already they went through 11 months of training, which has never happened to any group since NYS was founded in 1964.
The cash problem according to insiders is caused by the recent move to send all deputy directors on a three-month compulsory leave, leaving the institution with no signatories to access bank accounts. According to our source, the slum upgrading project stalled and officers in charge of such projects have left for head office where they have opted to stay until things get better.
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