Mama Ngina’s State salary hits Sh679,800 per month

Former First Lady Mama Ngina Kenyatta’s State pension has been increased to Sh679,800 monthly amid renewed scrutiny over her family’s multibillion-shilling wealth.

Mama Ngina’s pension was raised from Sh568,218 that she earned in 2018 at taxpayers’ expense for being the spouse of Kenya’s first president, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, who died in 1978, Treasury documents seen by the Business Daily show.

The lavish retirement benefits offered to State officers and personalities like Mama Ngina has come under heavy criticism on grounds they exited public office with outsized wealth, including prime properties worth billions of shillings and vast business interests.

The former First Lady’s State payment is tied to the law that provides for a spouse of a sitting or a retired president to be paid 40 percent of the current salary paid to the sitting Head of State should their husband die.

But some lawyers reckon that the payment is not consistent with the Presidential Retirement Benefits Act, which took effect in January 2003.

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