The government has come out to address the delays in the repatriation of the body of John Okoth Ogutu, a Kenyan teacher who was reportedly killed in Tanzania.
According to Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing'Oei, he recently met the family of Ogutu to console them and assured them of the government's commitment to repatriating Ogutu's remains.
"Met the family of the late John Okoth Ogutu, a school teacher in Tanzania, who lost his life during the post-electoral disturbances in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania," Sing'Oei said.
He went on to add, "Assured them of the government’s commitment to finding and repatriating the remains of our late national."
Sing'Oei, in a statement on Saturday, November 21, assured the family that President William Ruto's administration would pursue all diplomatic and procedural channels with the Tanzanian government to bring back Ogutu's body.
The PS announced while responding to reports that the main reason the repatriation process of Ogutu's remains took longer was due to the delay in swearing in Tanzanian government officials.
A section of Kenyans had begun questioning the Kenyan government's silence despite the recent formation of Tanzania's new cabinet.
This comes on the back of persistent calls by Ogutu's family for the government's intervention to help repatriate their kin's body back to the country for a decent burial.
While the circumstances leading to his murder remain unclear, Ogutu's family have since called for investigations and justice for their own, whom they noted carried the family's hopes.
The deceased's family initially revealed that Ogutu's body had been taken to the Mwanyamala mortuary, but shockingly, when his colleagues visited the morgue, it was not available.
John was among the hundreds of people killed during the post-election violence in Tanzania, with the country's opposition calling on the United Nations to probe what they labelled as a massacre by President Samia Suluhu's regime.
Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Commission has called for immediate and thorough investigations into the killings witnessed in Tanzania during the recent elections.
