By Jerry Okungu
Nairobi, Kenya
April 8, 2013
The Kenyan tax payers are
a very unlucky lot. They will never get it right with their elected leaders.
Despite voting massively to remove one lot after another since the 9th
parliament, any set of MPs they bring in will as if programmed, instantly
resort to plotting how to fleece the treasury.
How come since we changed
Moi’s regime in 2002, we have been electing a hungry and greedy set of leaders
to our parliament? How come that during the 10th parliament, only
Johnson Muthama saw the need to pay his taxes yet even the Speaker of the
National Assembly who pocketed more money than Muthama avoided taxation like a
plague?
Is there a chance that we
can amend the constitution to elect Kenyans who are ready to serve the country
as volunteers because in life, they have made their wealth elsewhere? Or better
still, can we peg elected leaders to their level of education and pay them in
line with civil servants and other public servants? Why pay a Form Four school
dropout the same salary as a professor just because both are MPs?
As a Kenyan, I have been
thoroughly embarrassed to see that our newly elected members of parliament and
county clamoring for more pay even before they perform an honest task for a single
day. It is hurting to see those who were youth wingers and personal messengers
of MPs just the other day clamoring for more money than the 79K they have been
awarded as county reps.
Suddenly they want to live
in posh areas of Nairobi where rents are in the scale of 80K and above per
month. If indeed the 79K they are being paid cannot meet their monthly
expenses, how did they manage their lives all these years? Did they live on
trees and ate herbs and rats for a living all these years? What has suddenly
happened to the public schools and hospitals they used to go to? Were they
elected to serve Kenyans or to lead lavish lifestyles?
It is this same lavish
lifestyle that angered Kenyans so much when the 10th parliament was
hell bent on ripping the treasury of 2 billion shillings as golden handshake
before parliament was dissolved. The wrath of the Kenyan voter sent 180 of them
packing thinking that all would be well with the new people’s representatives.
We were wrong again.
There is nothing
intrinsically wrong with county reps, governors, MPs and senators asking for a
decent pay to cater for their needs. However, they must remember how the rest
of the 40 million Kenyans live, some of who may not even afford a dollar a day.
If you doubt me, travel to Lokichogio, Turkana, West Pokot and even parts of
Central Province and Nyanza where abject poverty is still king.
The money they are looking
for must come from somewhere. Someone must have worked for it. Our treasury is
not a bottomless pit. Our taxes cannot merely be levied to lavish a few elected
leaders who have done nothing for this country. When the economy improves, the
issue can be revisited. Until then, they can do well to shut up for awhile and
focus on the job that took them to parliament or county assembly.
I can understand if former
MPs and cabinet ministers who used to earn 1000k a month have had their
salaries as governors, senators and MPs slashed to just over 500k. Obviously they will need some
adjusting to do. However, this Salary Remuneration Commission rationalization
did not come as a surprise to them. They knew all along that public service
wage bill had run amok, thanks to the greed of the 10th parliament
that led the pack.
To tell you the truth,
frequent upward adjustment of salaries for MPs, Ministers and Permanent
Secretaries, sometimes without any justification was the reason we had so many
wild cat labour strikes in Kenya in the last five years. If teachers were not
on the streets, professors, doctors and nurses were carrying placards demanding
haki yao. If civil servants were not
downing their tools, the police were grumbling and engaging in go slow
protests. It was because they could not understand why they should take home
10k per month while MPs who worked three days a week took home 1000k a month!
There is too much wastage
in public service. The other day I saw a newspaper report that alleged that the
public service spends over Ks 4 billion in tea and flowers in one year. One wonders
what Ks 4 billion would do to the people of Turkana who are perpetually in
abject poverty. What would happen if there was a freeze in the buying of
flowers and tea for public service workers for just one year?
This country needs more
super highways not just Thika Highway. We need working modern railway and
commuter buses in cities like Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu. We need security,
food sufficiency, healthcare, better classrooms, books, laptops and enough
teachers for our schools. We need more trained doctors, nurses, lab technicians,
medical equipment and medicines for our hospitals and clinics.
Kenyans are dying in their
thousands due to the inadequacy of the police force to man traffic on our roads
or simply to shield us from external terrorist attacks. We need more money to
train and deploy more police officers, buy faster moving police vehicles to
properly keep surveillance on our highways and net criminals before they plant
bombs in our cities. We need cash to manage perennial floods!
We need more money to
provide universal healthcare for all Kenyans at home and abroad. This universal
healthcare will make Kenya a healthy and productive nation. The more reason we
cannot waste our limited resources on a group of people whose output has always
been difficult to quantify.
0 comments:
Post a Comment