Chairman of the Committee for the Implementation of Citizen Participation in Security (CPS) Joseph Kaguthi has urged the national government to resume its funding of the State broadcaster, Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) instead of depending on privately owned media.
Speaking after closing a three-day training workshop for KBC and Kenya News Agency (KNA) editors conducted at the Kenya Wildlife services (KWS) Institute in Naivasha, Kaguthi said that the country cannot achieve its national values by depending largely on privately owned media whose main agenda is to make profit.
He insisted that KBC and KNA are tasked with the major responsibility of ensuring citizen participation in the national agenda key among them the Nyumba Kumi community-based policing initiative that champions citizen involvement in security matters.
Kaguthi said that at a time when the country is fighting vices such as radicalisation, corruption, diseases among other important issues, the government needed its own media to set the public agenda to influence desired political, economic and social change.
Meanwhile, the Nyumba 10 security initiative intends to leverage on the social media platform to create security awareness and also reach the vast majority of people in the country.
The initiative has for the last one month trained 150 journalists, 500 chiefs, and thousands of citizens on sustainable models of participatory management on security in the country.