Puzzle as only 200 show up for police recruitment in Murang’a East

Wangari Njuguna 17th November, 2025 09:24 PM

Caption:Low turnout marks Murang’a police recruitment. VIDEO/K24TV

Police recruitment exercise in Murang’a East Sub-County was characterised by low turnout, with only a few youths showing up at Ihura Stadium.

The Chairperson of the recruitment panel, Geofrey Ruheni, said the number of those who turned up was below what they anticipated, and it puzzled them.

Ruheni said that, considering the exercise was being held in Murang’a Town, they were expecting a large turnout of over 1,000 and above, but this was not the case.

He pointed out that by 8:00 am when the exercise was commencing, only a few interested youths had shown up, and they had to wait a little longer for the numbers to increase.

“We got approximately 200 youths who turned up for the exercise, which is way too low as we had anticipated more than 1,000 youths,” remarked Ruheni.

Some of the youth who had turned up at Ihura stadium for the police recruitment exercise. PHOTO/Rebeccah Wangari

Information not published

“We suspect the information about the exercise was not well publicised, which is why we did not have a huge turnout as expected,” he added.

Further, he said a majority of those who turned out did not meet the qualifications, and they were sent back home.

“Only 60 out of the 200 youths who had turned up qualified to proceed with the recruitment exercise, going by the set guidelines,” he added.

He said the Sub-County has been allocated 16 slots, six slots reserved for the ex-NYS as per the president’s directive.

Ruheni also said the recruitment process was free and fair, and no case of conmanship was reported in the area.

The recruitment exercise seeks to employ 10,000 Kenyans countrywide to join the police forces after the High Court lifted the conservatory orders, which had been imposed barring the National Police Service from conducting the exercise.

An activist, Eliud Matindi, moved to court seeking to bar the recruitment exercise, claiming that the Inspector General of Police does not have the legal mandate to oversee the exercise.

The last recruitment exercise in the country was conducted in March 2022 when the NPS recruited 5,000 officers.