Baidoa, 15 November– In supporting the reforms, restructuring and development plans of the Somali Police Force (SPF), the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) has launched a series of specialised training programmes for police officers in Baidoa, the capital of Southwest State of Somalia.
In line with its mandate, ATMIS supports the SPF with specialised training, advising and mentorship as well as service delivery capacity in the provision of policing services across Somalia through force generation and deployments.
“Together with the police command here, we did a needs assessment for Southwest State police and identified key gaps in the areas of financial intelligence, traffic management and crime investigations. We want to equip the police officers here so that they are able to respond to threats from Al-Shabaab effectively, accurately and timely,” said the ATMIS Police Acting Coordinator of Reforms and Restructuring, SSP Alex Ndili.
“First is institutional capacity building where we are cooperating very closely with Southwest State police commanders to address the gaps. We want to review strategic documents including Standard Operating Procedures and policies on community policing, traffic management, logistics and human resource management,” he revealed.
Present at the launch of the training was Col. Amin Mohamed Osman, the commander of Bay Regional Police, who said that building the capacity of Somali police officers would strengthen systems of governance, entrench the rule of law, and improve economic, social, and political development.
“These capacity building workshops are very important because they not only boost the skills and the professionalism of the police officers, but they also help with crime investigations and setting conditions for rule of law to prevail,” Col. Amin stated.
Contributing to establishing the rule of law is what motivates Dahir Hassan Omar, a Southwest State police officer. “I hope we will gain skills from this training that will help us serve our people better. Training sessions meant to improve the capacity and efficiency of the police are important in building a country that understands and respects the rule of law,” said Dahir.
The three weeks training is part of ATMIS’ strategic objective to enhance the capacity of the Somali Security Forces to progressively take over security responsibilities ahead of the exit of ATMIS forces. The police contributing countries to ATMIS are Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zambia who are deployed across the five operational sectors.