Garissa residents have welcomed the move by President William Ruto to remove the vetting process of Kenyan Somalis seeking government documents.
Last Thursday while in Wajir, President Ruto, through the presidential proclamation, removed the ID vetting process in the North Eastern and other parts of the country.
Abdi Salat, a retired Kenya Defence Forces veteran, is among many parents who have welcomed the suspension terming it as momentous steps towards inclusivity.
His eldest daughter, now a student at Garissa Teachers Training College, needed to register for an ID. However, he recalls how he spent two years moving from one registration exercise to another after the vetting committee repeatedly denied her the opportunity to obtain a national identity card.
“The vetting process was discriminatory and facilitated corruption. Non-Kenyans benefitted while we were left to suffer,” he said.
“The elders on the vetting committee do not recognise families who lived in military camps before returning home after years of service to the country. You either had to bribe the committee or your child was categorised as an unknown.”
In 2021, families of retired KDF officers took to the streets to protest the denial of IDs to their children.
He added that many children raised in military camps were unable to speak fluent Somali and struggled to answer simple questions posed by the vetting committee, such as identifying their clan and sub-clan.
Abdi recounted how former KDF veterans came together to form the Garissa Ex-KDF Veterans’ Families Union, with a membership of over 500, to address the issue with the county security team.
“At long last, my daughter received her ID after an unnecessarily punitive process. We truly appreciate the President for signing the Executive Order halting the vetting requirement,” he said.
Mohamed Abdullahi Aden, a third-year student at the University of Nairobi, also expressed his joy over the presidential decree.
“I should have been in my fourth year now, pursuing my engineering course. However, I was unable to report to campus after high school because I had no ID card. The vetting committee, which demanded Sh10,000, denied me the opportunity. The chiefs and elders on the committee insisted I was an alien, despite my father being a well-known civil servant in Garissa,” he said.