McReggae wrote:The police are asking you to avoid or be on high alert while in a number of areas around Nairobi and Mombasa. These include the ambassador hotel area, Highlands and Bettyz nightclubs, Corner house, Burgerdome restaurant, Marble Ark Hotel, Akamba bus station, River-road and Bus station in Nairobi. The police also want you to be alert while at Mtongwe ferry crossing, and akumatt Nyali at the coast.
.......courtesy of the star!!!!
While I agree on the need for advisories, I just wonder if we are not sabotaging some businesses by singling out business names or even buildings. Surely, telling me to avoid Akamba bus is like telling me to instead gor to Crown Coach or Easy Coach. Highland is an eatery..after this alert do you expect any sales.
Instead of issuing these alerts, why don't they instead "beef up" security in these areas or simply work with the affected proprietors or property managers to improve security e.g ensuring all patrons are scanned, CCTv or periodic sniffer dogs. By singling out these areas, the would be saboteurs will simply move to other unsuspected areas.
For instance, I would expect the (homeland) security strategists to be working with building owners to proactively reduce the success of any attempts at forced entry e.g churches, restaurants popular shops with easy vehicular access from roads should install heavy duty barriers to forestall any forced intrusion, while observing the need to ensure normal life is not overly interrupted. For instance, the Stanley made some changes without interrupting the flow of human traffic.
Long term plans should include digitization of motorvehicle records, so that a police officer seated in a car can query a suspicious car's licence plate and get instant feedback. similary, we should insist that any passenger making a booking with Akamba or other company prouduces passport or Id, which will facilitate every bus on our road to have a near valid passenger manifest- will not only tackle the current threats but also stem bus jackings and drugging incidents. Similarly any person makind a hotel booking must show proof of identity. From today's Nation, just how did someone manage to sneak a suspicious item to the Inter con of all places and dissappear.
I would expect that by now they should have made arrangements with motor vehicle dealers and agrochemists to get details of all persons buying motor vehicles or certain fertilisers in great amounts. And I think now any truck e.g Canter or similar size vehicle entering the CBD must be pulled off for scanning before they they are allowed to do their deliveries.
The thrust of my argument is that the risk we assumed the minute we pursued the al-shaba criminals is here to stay for some time and therefore we need to look at it from a medium to long term lens if we are to succeed. Unfortunatley we made so many mistakes in the past e.g with urban planning that the cost of these measures will inevitable increase the cost of doing business.