The government has, yet again, betrayed the internally displaced persons (IDPs). Just like it failed to protect their lives and property more than a decade ago, it has allowed conniving faceless individuals to receive compensation in place of those who survived the ordeal.
Latest audit reports indicate that the government irregularly paid Sh2.7 billion to fictitious IDPs. This should raise eyebrows given that compensation was delayed for many months as the State and IDPs lobby disagreed over the list of beneficiaries.
But why so when the real IDPs were so easy to identify? These were people forced out of their homes by marauding gangs to settle in camps elsewhere, usually under sub-human conditions. Unlike other Kenyans, IDPs were living in locations with no amenities like hospitals, schools, worship centre, police stations and markets. Above all, the IDPs had national identity cards, and the Interior ministry under whose docket the National Registration Bureau lies, was in charge of screening the compensation list.
According to Auditor-General Edward Ouko, those who received payments include fake persons whose details don’t even exist in the database of the National Registration Bureau. It smacks of conspiracy that the Interior ministry - with extensive grassroots network – failed to distinguish fake from genuine IDPs.
Scammers apparently went to work immediately the State announced that Sh6.5 billion set aside for the IDPs had been released on December 2016. Soon after, the IDP lobby moved to court to contest a list of over 90,000 beneficiaries forced down their throats by ministry officials. The IDPs painfully remind us of violence that rocked the country in the aftermath of the disputed December 2007 presidential election. An estimated 1,220 Kenyans were killed and more than 660,000 displaced when violence flared up between supporters of rival presidential contenders.
That government officials schemed to steal from survivors of the violence speaks to the lowest level to which we have sunk as a graft-tainted society. The investigative agencies must swing into action immediately and ensure arrest and prosecution of officials found culpable.
It still flies on the face of justice that a decade later, not all the people who were uprooted from their homes feel secure enough to return to their properties.
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