MPS SHOULD EARN TEN TIMES THE SALARY OF THE LOWEST EARNING CIVIL SERVANT

Cyprian Orina-Nyamwamu

President Kibaki must immediately direct his minister for finance to permanently withdraw from the order paper the provision for over six million shillings gratuity for each Member of Parliament in order to uphold our constitution and avert the commission of theft by servant which is a crime under Kenyan laws.

The President must take action. He must make it clear to M.Ps that their employer is the people of Kenya. The attempts by MPs to blackmail the government with non performance of legislative functions until they are awarded stolen money should be met with a decisive response from the people of Kenya who pay salaries to their servants to work. If President Kibaki gives in to these criminal and senseless demands by the legislators, he must be prepared to face the wrath of the people for condoning and licensing crime and corruption.

Principle of equal pay for equal work
Three issues have emerged from this criminal attempt by legislators to steal from the public coffers in the name of gratuity. The first question is a moral question. Kenyan MPs are the highest paid in Africa although they are the laziest. They are paid more than what MPs in all European and North American countries are paid except for Britain, Germany and the USA. It is immoral that a country as poor as ours with a mere $ 14 bn economy can keep expanding the size of Parliament and then keep increasing the perks of the MPs while we keep receiving less from these MPs. The Kenyan MPs have subverted the decency of work. They work for a mere 20 hours a week spread over a few sessions in five years. They have undermined the principle of earning your pay and have brought about a social perversion of work to mean looting. In Kenya, it has become necessary to rationalize the MPs perks. They should earn ten times what the lowest civil servant earns and their working days stretched to six in a week. If we accept this principle the MPs in Kenya will only earn seventy thousand shillings. They shall then struggle to raise pay of the lowest earning civil servant to thirty thousand shillings so that they earn three hundred thousand shillings a month. Our parliament shall hence become the institution that lifts the governance and economic performance of the country and hence lift all Kenyans out of poverty. This is a moral responsibility our representatives must accept with humility.

Shocking greed and fraud
The second issue is governance issue. Is it acceptable that workers should determine their pay? Can a public official use his office to enrich himself and escape the net of corruption? Has Ringera’s Commission missed the meaning of corruption and hence allowed public officers to use their offices to enrich themselves? These questions demand answers from the people of Kenya and the President of the republic who bears the final responsibility for the acts of all public officials without exception. The impeding theft by 222 MPs of tax payers money in the area of billions of shillings should alarm all Kenyans regardless of political affiliation to stand up and act against corruption. This act of self aggrandizement motivated by shocking greed should be likened to about five hundred bank robberies being committed on a single day and all of us Kenyans refusing to act.

10 years of a policeman’s work to earn a MP’s monthly salary
The third issue is an issue of leadership. The President and the Minister of Finance have failed the country. Since 2003, President Kibaki and the ministers for finance have conspired with MPs to award salary increments, pass the CDF Act with the MPs as the appointing authority of the CDF committees and now the collusion to undertake the reap-off through the so called gratuity. Leadership requires that principles are followed to the letter. Without putting in place a policy on gratuity to members of Parliament, the government wants to selectively aid the current MPs to steal money from the tax payers. What about the nearly one thousand MPs who have served since independence most of whom played greater roles and accomplished greater things for Kenya than these 9th of greed and ignominy? The like J.M Kariuki, Shikuku, Chelagat Mutai, Seroney, Anyona, Mwangale, Wamwere, Anyieni, Kaggia, Kiano among others are some of those former MPs who excelled in their roles as MPs and deserve recognition and gratuity. The 9th parliament has not performed great Acts that should make them receive from the employer such mind boggling sums of money as it is being suggested. Kenyans should know that it takes a policeman or a worker in industrial area more than ten years of hard, life-threatening and crushing work to earn what an MP earns in a month with only 12 days of work. President Kibaki Must pre-empt the impeding theft and offer leadership.

Unedited