Haiti Consulate-General nominee Gabow refutes reports of officers resigning

President William Ruto’s nominee for consulate general for Haiti Noor Gabow has refuted reports that officers deployed to Haiti are leaving the service en masse.

During his vetting by the Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committee of the National Assembly on Friday, January 10, 2025, Gabow said the remarks by Lagdera MP Abdikadir Hussein were misleading.

“I want to clearly state that officers are being paid their salaries and no officer has left,” Gabow said.

In 2024, delays in the payment of salaries of the 400 Kenyan police officers in the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSSM) in Haiti led to widespread complaints by their kin back home.

However, the delay was resolved according to former police Inspector General Japhet Koome who indicated that the officers were getting their rightful pay.

Language barrier

During Gabow’s grilling by the Belgut MP Nelson Koech-led Defence committee, the former Deputy Inspector General of police was equally asked how he would navigate the country given the languages spoken in Haiti are unfamiliar to him.

Central Imenti MP Moses Kirima: “The country you are going to has languages which are not familiar to you; it is either French or Creole. What are you going to do to ensure that you are understood by the people you are going to serve there?”

Gabow: “I will not stop learning; I will be able to learn together with my team and we shall also have a multi-lingual team.

During the vetting, Gabow disclosed that he joined the police service as a junior officer and later rose through the ranks to become the Deputy Inspector General in charge of the Administration police and more recently an advisor of the Ministry of Interior and National Administration.

Illustrious career

Gabow equally noted that he had worked in the United Nations headquarters, Bosnia, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia among other countries.

Responding to concerns about where the consulate will be located, Gabow observed that the 400 Kenyan police officers currently in Haiti had brought relative peace to the Caribbean nation 12,000 kilometres from Kenya and that its capital was safe.

“If confirmed, I will be domiciled at Port au Prince,” Gabow said, noting that 30 other embassies are located in the capital.

He remarked that the Kenyan officers had managed to jointly regain control of the capital’s airport, seaport, police training school, and public hospitals and had cleared more roads since their entry.