Homa Bay County security team has banned funeral music events popularly known as ‘Disco Matanga’ and live bands in a move to curb rising cases of teenage pregnancies and other criminal activities in the region.
The area county commissioner Harman Shambi said that Disco Matanga and live band in bars in the area has been a hub for organized criminal activities targeting school-going children which have put the county in position two after Narok County in teenage pregnancy.
Shambi said this on Wednesday while addressing a public baraza at Bunge La Wenye Nchi in Homa Bay Town, where he said that they have mapped out areas which are notorious and soon they will conduct a crackdown to weed out events’ organizers in the region.
The officer who was accompanied by the County Police Commander Esther Seroney, County DCI boss Daniel Wachira, and other top county security officers further warned the perpetrators of Disco Matanga and live bands in the area that their music systems will be confiscated besides arresting them.
He further stated that they will not relent in the ongoing war against illicit brews in most parts of the county saying they cannot allow Homa Bay to be the hub of such brews and bhang.
At the same time, Shambi appealed to the county residents to work closely with the security agencies by revealing information on people who are still conducting the illegal business of illicit brews and saying their days are numbered.
On her part, Seroney asked the community to embrace community policing by reporting suspects amidst them to security agencies as a way of fighting the crime in the area. She stressed that her office is ready to cooperate with them in fighting the vice such as teenage pregnancies.
Elsewhere, police in Bureti Sub-county on Thursday cancelled a farmers’ meeting at the eleventh hour citing security concerns.
The tea farmers affiliated to Litein tea factory company Ltd had sought a permit to hold a meeting to deliberate on the low second payment from the Litein police station but it was cancelled Wednesday night citing security reasons.
The move by police to withdraw the meeting permit did not go down well with tea farmers who accused police of stopping a would-be a peaceful farmers’ meeting on flimsy grounds.
Police said the meeting would not go on as planned due to security reasons and asked the conveners led by a prominent tea farmer Edwin Kimetto to tell farmers to stay away from the meeting that would have been held at the factory ground.
The farmers had wanted to deliberate on the low second payment popularly known as a bonus and the way forward.
“This would have been a peaceful meeting. The farmers wanted to deliberate on the payment. We wanted to simply air our grievances and go home,” said Kimetto.
The farmers were to stage a protest saying they do not accept to be paid Sh14 per kilo for the tea they delivered to the factory from their last year’s tea produce from Sh28 last year.
The tea farmers questioned why bonuses from West of Rift valley have remained low for years yet payments for factories in the Central East of Rift were extraordinarily high.
Tea farmers who spoke to the media as they were dispersing threatened to deliver tea produce to privately run factories who were offering better prices rather than those run by Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA).
They also threatened to stop tea picking until the pay issue was addressed.
Speaker after speaker accused factory directors of keeping silent over the issue and threatened to vote them out in the next polls for failing to champion their interests.