Police are looking for alleged thieves who broke into four national government offices in Homa Bay town and stole crucial electronic and documents last weekend.
The thieves are said to have gained access to offices of the register of persons, cooperative office, National Council of Persons with Disability and that of the assistant county commissioner.
Homa Bay town registrar Belinda Atieno said the suspected criminals took away two monitors and CPUs and two digital and live capture cameras for digital fingerprints.
Two laptops were reported missing from the office of the county cooperative director.
Three computers were also stolen from the office.
The suspects also ran away with two computers and an internet router from the office of the Council of Persons with Disability.
At the Asego division assistant commissioner's office, a computer was taken away.
Atieno said the theft of the equipment has slowed down their operations.
“We're doing work and keeping data manually. Manual work is tedious,” Atieno said.
By Wednesday, staff from the affected offices had been summoned to record statements with the police to shed light on what could have happened.
County police commander Samson Kinne linked the breakage to an inside job.
Kinne said there was no sign of breakage in three offices, meaning the suspects used regular keys to open and access the door.
“Preliminary investigations result revealed that only one office had its door broken. Interrogation of the respective staffers is going on especially those who keep keys,” Kinne said.
However, some workers knew their offices were broken into before they reported to the police.
“We're also asking people with information about the disappearance of the gadgets to report to us as investigations continue,” Kinne said.
Since the incident was reported, no one has been arrested as the police said they are working round the clock to get the suspects.
There is a concern that some of the data kept in the computers could have been lost as some of the affected offices don't have backups.
County commissioner Moses Lilan said officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations have taken over the matter.
