North Eastern Regional Commissioner Nicodemus Ndalana has defended a government decision to evacuate seven non-local health workers from Bura East, the headquarters of Fafi Sub County over the weekend.
On Saturday, a police chopper was dispatched to airlift the health workers from Bura Sub county Hospital over fears of an impending Al-Shabaab attack.
The move was immediately faulted by area MP Abdikarim Osman through his Facebook page.
Abdikarim said that the move by the government “is tantamount to ceding Fafi constituency headquarters to the ragtag terrorist outfit based on unauthenticated and false security alarm”.
“This is utter abdication of responsibility on the part of the national government. If indeed there is credible intelligence to the supposed attacks, it’s expected that all the residents of Bura are to be secured instead of airlifting a few public servants,” the MP said.
But addressing the press in his office today Ndalana said the move to evacuate the health workers was necessitated by Al-Shabaab threats.
“We consulted widely as the security team together with the county government of Garissa before finally deciding to evacuate the health workers. It is not something that was hurriedly done,” Ndalana said.
The regional commissioner said there was credible intelligence that the militants were planning to carry out attacks just before the end of the holy month of Ramadhan.
“With such information coming from the Al-Shabaab that they wanted to carry out specific attack, would we have waited to see people die. It is the responsibility of the government to protect the lives and properties of its citizens,” he added.
Ndalana said that the health workers were airlifted to Garissa and not taken to Nairobi as had been alleged by some quarters.
