Some Kenyans are incorrigible thieves who feel absolutely no shame about their deplorable behaviour. Cases of theft by servant are rampant.
They range from house helps who steal from their employers to shop attendants who are happy to earn a pittance but be in that vantage position from where they run a clandestine parallel operation and crooks who brazenly loot public enterprises dry.
There are cartels through which crooked public servants have filthily enriched themselves from diverting resources meant for programmes for the most vulnerable people.
But here is another lot who do not respect anything, not even the dead. These are the shameless people who raid cemeteries in search of any treasures buried with the dead.
Yet another notorious group is that of people who rush to accident scenes not to help the injured but steal from the dead.
Not long ago, there were highway robbers targeting funeral convoys. They would snatch expensive coffins, heartlessly abandoning the bodies on the road.
The news that such callous people are preying on Nairobi’s Lang’ata Cemetery to steal metal bars and other valuables, which they sell to scrap metal dealers, is a deplorable low. These crooks are driving bereaved families into unnecessary expenses to secure their relatives’ graves.
Besides the payment for the burial site, families are forking out much more to protect the graves.
But the thieves have sunk to such depravity because there is a ready market for their loot. Just as we condemn the high-level corruption through which government officials and their accomplices loot billions of shillings, these petty thieves must not get off scot-free.
The authorities must investigate, identify and uproot the grim network, especially the unscrupulous scrap metal dealers fuelling this bizarre business.
