ENCOM Senior Officers Hold Annual Workshop In Nyeri

The Regional Commandants pose for a group photo with Director during a break at the workshop.

Director, D.K. Mbugua makes his opening remarks and presentation

Col. (Rtd)J. Kimani makes a presentation. 

The Kenya Forest Service Senior ENCOM Officers met in Nyeri for a three day workshop from the 23^rd to 25^th June 2010 to address and develop strategies of combating forestry crime and preventing its degradation.

The workshop was chaired by the Commandant KFS (Rtd.) Col. John Kimani who spearheaded the workshop’s coming up with viable work plans and presentations from the Commandants. He termed the workshop as a forum for learning for the officers which will help them in understanding and carrying out their duties in the various capacities in their work stations.

On the first day of the symposium, the Director KFS, Mr. D. K. Mbugua graced the workshop and also conducted the official opening of the workshop.  In his remarks, he emphasized the need for KFS to employ (100) new officers who will be sourced from the 2500 strong force of rangers at KFS. He also highlighted why the Service saw the rationale to employ the Commandants as the need to bring in the experience they have acquired from the different departments of Armed and Civil forces they had previously worked for, which will help in molding the KFS Rangers into an enviable Force. 

Mr. Mbugua encouraged the Officers to lead in bridging the gap between the Enforcement Division and the Professional cadres for the common good of conserving the Natural Resources as a team. He said that the Basic Training of the Foresters was a step towards to integrating of the two teams from diverse backgrounds and philosophies of work into a team to forge forward.

The Commandants were mandated to act as the Public Relations Officers of the KFS to the outside world, and were therefore required to interrelate with other stakeholders/organizations with the common interest of protecting and conserving our forests. He also accepted the use of the new titles that the commandants came up for their offices and for the Londiani College’s. The Commandants from the Conservancies will henceforth be referred to as Regional Commandants instead of Assistant Commandants. The Londiani College will be known as School of Paramilitary Training College (SPTC) whereas the Commandant of the School will be known as Commandant, SPTC Londiani.

Each of the participants gave a presentation on the role they play challenges and the achievements in their various fields of work and gave out recommendations on the way forward.

The Director and the Commandant tried to help them come up with ways of achieving their set goals and targets regardless of the situation, by showing them how best they could use the available resources to deal with the challenges with promises to look into the serious cases and assist shortly while coming up with strategies to bring about lasting solutions for the problems.

On the last day, Friday 25^th June, 2010, The Chief Human Resource Officer Mr. Wellington Amkaya paid the participants a visit and gave them a lecture on Ethics and Integrity and sensitized the officers on the same. He told the Commandants that it was one of the set goals of the KFS from KACA to train officers so as to report to the Commission on how far they have gone with the training.

The Annual Workshop will be held in Coast Conservancy Next year.

Report & Pictures by Rahab Gitau