Leaders from the Northeastern region have called for the implementation of a proposal to arm chiefs and deploy the army at the border with Somali to fight al Shabaab militants.
They also demanded an end to extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances of locals over alleged involvement in terrorism.
The elders and peace committee urged the security agencies to treat volunteers of information with utmost secrecy to avoid victimisation.
The region's leaders spoke to journalists after holding a consultative forum for peace and security aimed at countering violent extremism on Monday.
Speaking to the press in Garissa town on Tuesday, they said that failure to implement the proposals will slow the fight against the runaway insecurity in the region.
The Kenya Livestock Marketing Association chairman Dubat Amey said that most of the proposals are similar to the ones that were presented to the president after the Garissa University attack in April 2015. Not all were implemented, he said.
Amey said tarmacking of roads will end the planting of IEDs that have killed 53 police officers since 2017.
The other recommendations include motivating the community to share intelligence information and rewarding genuine informers.
The committee further recommended that the county collaborates with the national government in funding activities towards beefing up security.
“It is one thing to have a good document and a totally different thing to implement it. We have been there before and our failure to implement the recommendation is our biggest weakness and undoing,” Amey said.
Amey said that only a quarter of the 2015 recommendations were implemented and the region had slowly started witnessing relative calm.
“We know that when the government is serious on implementing these recommendations it can easily do that. Unfortunately, that is what is lacking,” he said.
He said the recommendations should be cascaded to the grassroots because most of them touch on the role of the local community.
Hassan Osman, the peace committee secretary said their activities across the subcounties should be funded to take part in civic education.
“We want to work closely with the subcounty security committees because they are the people who will implement some of the recommendations,” he said.
Governor Ali Korane, Senator Yusuf Haji, National Assembly Majority leader Aden Duale (Garissa Township MP ), Sofia Abdinoor (Ijara), Mohamed Dahiye (Dadaab), Mohamed Hire (Lagdera), Omar Shurie (Balambala), Abdikarim Osman (Fafi) attended the forum.
