Civil society groups raise concern over proposal to increase MPs' pension

The civil society in Kenya now wants a proposal by MPs to increase their pension and other retirement benefits once they leave office dropped saying its implementation will cripple the other critical sectors of the economy.

The Civil Society Reference Group instead wants the government to put such resources into manufacturing, housing for the poor and rural infrastructural development to spur growth in the agricultural sector.

BIG FOUR AGENDA

Mr Suba Churchill, the presiding convener of the civil society, noted that president Uhuru Kenyatta’s Big Four agenda will also not be met if the MPs get their way.

Manufacturing, housing, food security and affordable healthcare for all, form the big four agenda that President Kenyatta wants to achieve at the end of his second and final term in office. 

“The civil society calls on the Treasury and the presidency to assure Kenyans that the idea of retirement benefits for MPs whose implementation will gobble up limited funds is dropped,” Mr Suba said.

The Treasury and the Budget and Appropriations Committee of the National Assembly came up with the proposal to increase the pension of elected leaders from the County Assemblies to Parliament by 700 per cent once they leave office.

“It is unthinkable that at this point when Kenyans are struggling to make ends meet, and their crops and livestock have been destroyed by floods and equally devastating drought, elected leaders are only thinking of engorging themselves on the scarce public funds already depleted by a burgeoning public wage bill,” Mr Suba said.

When MPs opposed plans by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission to review their salaries and allowances, President Kenyatta has in the past said that such proposals will not see the light of day under his watch.

The MPs have since gone to court to challenge the SRC gazette notice of July 1, 2017, which reviewed all the salaries and allowances for state and public officers.

PROVIDERS

They have though defended the need to have their salaries increased saying that they have become social security providers to their constituents.

Similar arguments were also advanced when the MPs pushed for the creation of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) in 2003, now the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF)

Each constituency receives about Sh86 million annually for development purposes.

But audit reports from the office of the auditor general have pointed a worrying trend at how the kitty is managed with claims of plunder of resources as audit queries remain unanswered 15 years down the line and counting.

“The civil society hopes that the government will instead make counter-proposals that would see lecturers in public universities who have been on strike, return to work so that the thousands of undergraduate students whose education has been in limbo for months on end can resume learning and finish their studies.”