BTP Proactive Communications, a company formed with the merger of UK based BTP Advisers and Kenya’s Proactive Media, hosted the Kuwa Shujaa Anti-Vandalism Campaign in Nairobi. The event was aimed at creating awareness on vandalism on infrastructure.
The campaign was to seek to elicit a response to the problem of vandalism that has affected major development across various economic sectors, such as energy, telecommunication, construction and roads in Kenya.
In the campaign event, Fridah Musyimi, of Proactive Communications said that it was important for the media plays a crucial role in advocacy in Kenya and therefore bringing them aboard is expected to playing a positive role in fighting vandalism.
Eng. Okeyo, the manager, maintenance from Kenya National Highway Association (KeNHA) said that they has spent about 32 Billion on the Thika Super Highway so far on replacing vandalized road furniture and the destruction is still recurring.
“There has been a lot of damage to these facilities, the rails and other metallic things have been broken and taken to scrap metal dealers, these actions are done mainly at night when there is minimal supervision,” he said.
Some of the strategies suggested to help combat vandalism included use of informers, this will help gather information that could be used in the court of law; giving stiff penalties to offenders like 3 year imprisonment, establishing Anti-Vandalism Police unit so as to safe guard the affected areas, community involvement & public awareness and the tougher regulation of the scrap metal sector among others.
The KuwaShujaa, Kaa Rada’ (Be a Hero, Be Vigilant) campaign brings together stakeholders from among those sectors worst affected by vandalism to co-ordinate their efforts to combat it.
