NAIROBI (Halbeeg News)- Kenya’s National Youth Services were unpaid for their services at Kenya-Somalia border, investigations have revealed.
The youth were involved in the construction of the ongoing USD 8 million Kenya-Somalia border wall for nearly 18 months before they were withdrawn when the project was taken over by the Defence Ministry.
According to local media reports the Ministry of Interior failed to pay more than USD 3 million to the National Youth Service (NYS) servicemen despite the spending budget to construct a 10-kilometre wall along the Kenya-Somalia border.
The wall, dubbed the Kenya-Somalia Border Securitisation Project, was started in 2015 in an effort to stop the penetration of attacks by the Somali armed group al-Shabaab.
The group carried out a spate of attacks inside Kenya in retaliation for Kenya Defence Forces presence inside southern Somalia since October 2011.
The wall project encountered stiff resistance from some sections of the members of parliament mainly from North Eastern Kenya.
The MPs from the region argued that the so-called security barrier will disrupt the business between the people across the border.
Chief Administrative Secretary in the Ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender, Rachael Shebesh appeared before the National Assembly’s Defence and Foreign Affairs committee which inquired into the status, viability and efficacy in the implementation of the Kenya-Somalia Border Securitisation Project.
The minutes, attached to the report of the committee show that the unpaid subsistence for October, November and December 2016.
The committee said the NYS were called to demobilise from Kiunga and Mandera sites after the Ministry of Defence came up with a decision of contracting services for both Mandera and Kiunga project respectively to private contractors.
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