Persons who vandalise materials at the Sh6 billion Kimira Oluch agriculture project's water intake points and canal valves for scrap metals will be arrested.
Nyanza regional commissioner Magu Mutindika termed the vandalism unacceptable and ordered police to arrest anyone found in the act.
He urged the residents to own the project for their own good and the good of the country. “Leaders must sensitise citizens to protect the project,” he said.
The administrator urged chiefs and their assistants to convene an urgent baraza on site to sensitise the residents to the need to protect the project from vandalism.
The Kimira Oluch Smallholder Farmer Improvement Project is funded by the African Development Bank and the government. It is 86 per cent complete.
“The project is part of the national government’s food security agenda; one of the pillars on the Big Four Agenda among them manufacturing, affordable healthcare and housing and is intended to increase the yields of food to make the country food secure,” he said.
Mutindika said the project has enabled farmers to produce a variety of food crops among them rice, maize, banana, tomatoes and kales.
He also noted people are encroaching at the project riparian lands and warned that all the illegal structures along the water canals will be demolished without delay.
The regional commissioner had led Nyanza Region Development Implementation and Coordination Committee on a two-day tour that ended Wednesday in Homa Bay county.
He was accompanied by Tutah Richard, senior director of the Presidential Delivery Unit, Homa Bay county commissioner Moses Lilan and director PDU Jared Omondi among other civil servants.
