Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has moved to defend elected leaders and other government officials from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), which he accuses of harassment and intimidation.
Speaking in Mombasa on Thursday, Gachagua also accused DCI officers of extorting bribes from govt officials on the pretext of fighting corruption.
“We are aware of the harassment and intimidation that governors undergo through state agencies. The level of extortion by detectives pretending to be fighting graft, whereas they were extorting money. We assure you this is a thing of the past,” he told the Council of Governors (CoG) conference.
The former Mathira MP said the Kenya Kwanza administration had directed DCI to leave government offices and return to their headquarters on Kiambu Road.
“We have told DCI to go back to Kiambu Road and wait for crimes to be reported there. They have no business in government offices hovering all over and creating a toxic environment for Service delivery,” he said.
“We cannot have detectives in government offices because they poison the atmosphere for civil servants to deliver.”
Gachagua also faulted the DCI for allegedly deploying junior officers to arrest high-ranking elected leaders. According to the DP, this undermines and humiliates the elected leaders.
“Let the head of that particular organisation write a letter to the governor himself and not delegate some junior officers to address a sitting governor because that is not right and those are the things we are going to do to restore the dignity of our leaders,” Gachagua said.
“This will enable them to perform because when you embarrass an elected leader in front of his juniors and you go away, how do you expect him to perform the following day?”
The DP pledged to regain the dignity of leaders under the new administration.
“You are lucky that the Deputy President is a man who has been harassed. we have agreed with the president, the harassment we went through was probably all God’s doing so that we can never allow anyone else to go through the same,” Gachagua stated.
