PHOTO CAPTION: The busy Namanga border crossing between Kenya and Tanzania An anonymous tipster has blown the whistle on unchecked fraud at the Namanga Border Crossing.
Writing to this blog on Sunday, July, 10, the source informed us that corrupt officials at the "Port Health" bureau have been extorting vulnerable truck drivers by demanding unjustified fees for extremely petty and groundless reasons.
For instance, each lorry has to be "sanitized" at a cost of Sh200 on arrival at the border.
This mandatory step involves spraying some kind of liquid detergent on all the units that cross into the country.
The route averages over 500 trucks and dozens of passenger buses per day.
For the buses, the fee is Sh1,000 each.
On top of this, it is strongly alleged that attendants at the Port Health office are also involved in the illicit trade of medical certifications, which they mostly sell out to desperate entrants who cross into Kenya without proper documents.
As would be expected, orchestrators of the sophisticated crime syndicate ensure they do not draft any receipts to authenticate the payments.
Instead, all the cash is directly channeled into their pockets. "Hi, Cyprian, please hide my identity. I am a clearing and forwarding agent at the Namanga border, and there's this corrupt office by the name of Port Health Office. These guys behave like there's no law in Kenya. First, imagine they extort a lot of money from truck drivers in the name of spraying some detergent (JIK) on all trucks coming to Kenya for coronavirus. Each truck driver is forced to part with Sh200 and we have almost 500 trucks a day. For passenger buses, they charge Sh1000 each, which are about ten a day. No official receipt, only local printed unofficial receipt just to hoodwink drivers - where the money goes directly to individual pockets. Second, they force people to buy yellow fever cards but refuse to give them official receipts, meaning the money goes directly to individual pockets. Third, they force people to show them a soft copy of the coronavirus vaccination certificate even when one has a hard copy, and being a border point, most people's phones go roaming and so it becomes hard to access the internet so they get an avenue to extort the passengers of their money," the source writes.
The Port Health office at the Namanga border crossing is tasked with the prevention of quarantinable diseases and conditions of public health significance from external sources at the port of entry.