By Frank Kamuntu
A woman in Juja, Kiambu a county in the former Central Province of Kenya has been arrested for obstructing census officials and lying.
Police officers on Sunday arrested Nelly Kinja, a tenant at Joyland estate in Juja, for blocking enumerators from counting her, using vulgar language and lying.
According to a police report, Ms. Kinja purported to be the landlady and told the enumerators, who were accompanied by an area elder, that she would not be enumerated as the government has overburdened her through payments of land rates.
She told the census officials that the entire exercise serves no purpose and later claimed that she had been enumerated on Saturday, which turned out to be a lie.
Juja Sub-County Police Commander Dorothy Migarusha said the woman will Monday be charged at Thika Law Courts.
According to the constitution of the Rep, of kenya the law prescribes penalties for people committing offences relating to the national population census.
Penalties
Missing out on the census could land you in jail for one year, see you pay a fine of Sh500, 000, or suffer both penalties.
This is among the tough set of conditions in the law for Kenyans who might be tempted to obstruct the conduct of the exercise.
The Statistics (Amendment) Act, 2019, that was signed into law by President Uhuru Kenyatta last month, amended the penalties for obstruction of census from Sh100,000 to Sh500,000 while giving the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) professional independence and expanded its mandate.
At the same time, giving failing to answer the enumerators’ questions or giving them false information will also attract a similar penalty but with a six-month jail term.
