EALA MPS TO ALTER EAC TREATY

DAILY NATION
NAIROBI, KENYA
By ALPHONCE SHIUNDU
March 24 2009

The East Africa Legislative Assembly has proposed to amend the East Africa Community treaty to speed up the implementation of its plans.

There was need to wrest control from member states to the Council of Ministers as prescribed in the treaty, Uganda’s MP Daniel Wandera said during Eala’s sessions at Nairobi’s Old Parliament Chambers on Tuesday.

Mr Wandera said the “good plans” may not be achieved if interference from the Executives of the member countries continued to dog the regional body.

“The buck stops with the Council of Ministers and this Assembly... We must be ready to act on the targets we set for ourselves,” the Ugandan Eala representative said.

Eala is a 55-member legislature, with 45 MPs – nine from each of the five member countries – and 10 ex-officio members among them ministers and their deputies, plus two top officials from the secretariat.

If the Assembly manages to push the agenda through, and the individual member states endorse it, this would mean that the integration dream would move faster.

The current debacle between Kenya and Uganda over a tiny island – Migingo – in Lake Victoria is just a case in point on how the regional body lacks “teeth”.

Benefits

Some of the benefits likely to come with integration include identity cards for EAC citizens to help in free movement, and uniformity in education systems.

“We also need to harmonise labour, immigration and trade laws if we have to succeed,” Mr Wandera said.

But speaking on the sidelines of the Eala’s proceedings, Kenya’s EAC minister, Amason Kingi said the integration would remain a mirage if individual countries did not place enough emphasis on it.