An infuriated President Uhuru Kenyatta has ordered the police to arrest and press treason charges against anyone caught vandalising national infrastructure projects.
Speaking on Thursday, January 20, at the National Police College Main Campus, Kiganjo in Nyeri County, Uhuru ordered police to be ruthless when dealing with criminals caught selling scrap metals.
Further, the president announced a ban on the buying and selling of scrap metal until the government institutes proper guidelines to regulate the industry and curb crime.
Uhuru stated that the law will be followed when dealing with such people as he drew examples on government infrastructure in Naivasha which has been vandalized and stolen.
The president noted that he will not allow people to steal from Kenyans and termed the vandalism of national infrastructure projects as an economic crime.
"In Naivasha, people had intentionally unbolted some of our transmission lines and mass to create chaos and havoc. It is clear that these are acts of economic sabotage which fall as a treasonable act and the law is clear on how you deal with these acts,"
"We expect you to do your duty and execute your function as the law dictates. As of today, we will no longer allow and we have put a moratorium on the export or buying and selling of any scrap material until we have put in place proper guidelines that will ensure that material is not coming from the hard investments that the Kenyan people have made," the President stated.
This directive comes in the backdrop of court cases where Kenya Power managers and workers are facing sabotage charges over a national blackout.
An investigation by the DCI showed that the basement of the Angle towers of Kenya Power’s High voltage power lines in Embakasi had been vandalized and the cross beams removed or unbolted, leading to the collapse that caused a major outage.
DCI George Kinoti further revealed that the Angle Towers had been vandalised and bracings (tower members) could not support the weight of the heavy conductors.
In November 2021, police caught two people suspected of vandalizing the Standard Gauge Railway line in Mtito Andei, which caused a two-hour delay of the train service.
Police stated that they recovered railway line blocks, twenty-two pieces of Gauge blocks, and one fishplate, that they say were “part of a haul being loaded into a waiting lorry at a scrap metal yard".
