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The Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad (PLS), set up to pro­tect farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try from crim­i­nals, is now be­ing di­vert­ed to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices for var­i­ous Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries projects. This shift un­der­mines the re­al pur­pose of the unit and leaves agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties, al­ready prone to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, in­creas­ing­ly ex­posed.

Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cers—78 con­sta­bles and 12 cor­po­rals in the squad—have ex­pressed grow­ing frus­tra­tion over their re­as­sign­ment from pa­trolling agri­cul­tur­al lands to du­ties like guard­ing fish­ing de­pots and at­tend­ing min­istry func­tions.

To make mat­ters worse, four of the squad’s nine ve­hi­cles are non-func­tion­al, crip­pling their mo­bil­i­ty and pres­ence.