Exposed: Corruption At The Kenya Wildlife Service

Morning Nyakundi, I have been your staunch follower and I think you do a good job in highlighting ills in the society, keep up the good job. Here is an exposé about one of the state parastatals, Kenya Wildlife Service where I work, here corruption thrives unabated. I will highlight some of them here, you can carry out independent verifications of just so, that you are sure. Corruption here has led to crippling of several departments’s for example, at the Veterinary Department there is chronic personnel shortage, the last time a Vet. Was recruited here was in 2013, despite resignation of some vets and vet assistants whom went to Qatar for greener pastures, this by the way is one of the factors that led to the deaths of the Rhinos that were translocated to Tsavo NP last year, so much so, that an advert was put up in the daily newspaper last year (Nation  May 8th 2018) Kenyans applied for these positions that required you to have all manner of clearance certificates, the interviews for these positions were never done except for the upper part that is KWS Air wing (The head here is a newly recruited white person Nickelson) for the rest, they were forgotten and plans are underway to sneak in relatives of the senior guys. You must have heard about the Forensic Laboratory that is very well equipped at KWS, just so you know, it has only ONE  staff member, KWS is yet to recruit staff responsible for that lab, donor funded equipment’s are full in that lab though. Research division is another affected area, several research personnel have left for greener pastures, all the while KWS has never recruited research staff, which was a contributing factor in the botched Tsavo Rhino Translocation, people who left include, Dr. Tuqa Jirmo (KWS-LEWA), Dr. Yusuf Adan(KWS- WWF), Dr. Ben Okita (KWS- STE) Antony Wandera (KWS-NRT), Dr. Nyunja to mention a few. Most KWS departments are run by Temporary staff some of whom are better educated than the old guards that have permanent employees, e.g. we have temporary staff who are Masters holders, infant, some are doing their PhD’s and the organization is yet to employ them, Human Capital Division is run by temporary staff, i.e. Welfare office, Registry and more than half the secretaries are temporary employees. The list goes on and on. Examples of other departments run by temporary staff include: Accounts and procurements country wide Workshops around all KWS parks country wide Transport, most KWS drivers are temporary Captive facility (Nairobi Orphanage and Safari Walk) Animal keepers and A Vet. Doctor left for greener pastures in Qatar, KWS is yet to recruit replacements for these keepers and a Vet. Customer care departments (Those that charge at points of entry) are few and most of them are temporary, so severe is the shortage that during high visitation times such as the December Holidays and during Easter, students are given KWS branded shirts and blouses to help handle the many clients that flock the facilities at that point in time. KWS is very keen in protecting its image out there, that you would think that all is well, clearly it is not