QUESTIONS continue to linger on how two people broke into Arusha District Council’s office and walked away with National Identification Authority (NIDA) equipment worth millions of shillings.
The daring men, who have since been arrested by the regional police force are said to have stolen the equipment without breaking the main door that leads to the authority’s busy office housed inside the Arusha DC’s block at Sekei area yesterday morning.
The stolen equipment were identified as two laptops, two cameras, three desktop computers, two extension cables and a Dermalog Fingerprint scanner. However, it could not be immediately established whether the Arusha DC premises were installed with Closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) at the time of the incident to reveal the whole scene.
In a telephone interview with ‘africa-press’ yesterday, Arusha Regional Police Commander Jonathan Shana confirmed the incident, saying they were holding the two suspects in connection with the early morning heist
The arrested have been identified as Asheri Lorubani who is a NIDA Officer at the council and Wilson Laizer, a watchman at Arusha DC.
According to Shana, the suspects will be interrogated with a view of revealing their motive and theft of the equipment.
“In the same vein we’ve deployed a number of plainclothes officers to arrest the accomplices in the syndicate behind the robbery,” further said the regional police boss.
Briefing reporters yesterday, Arumeru District Commissioner Mr Jerry Muro cried foul, saying there were few unidentified individuals, who were plotting to derail him ahead of the January 20 deadline of registering SIM cards through Biometric system.
On her part, NIDA officer attached to Arusha DC Ms Neema Nkya admitted that the theft happened, and was likely to affect their registration and issuance of National Identity Cards, despite State making it a compulsory exercise in the country.
“It is still perplexing to wake in the morning only to find our office empty, while the door is still intact,” she said.
