Africa-Press – Kenya. Kenya’s East African Legislation Assembly members are pushing for huge perks at the taxpayers’ cost, including high-end cars, mortgages and offices in Nairobi.
Their National Assembly and Senate counterparts enjoy a wide range of benefits including transport reimbursement, car grants and cheap mortgages. The lawmakers representing the country in the Arusha-based regional parliament, also want a slot at the lucrative Parliamentary Service Commission.
PSC is the statutory body that employs parliamentary staff and pays MPs’ salaries and allowances. The nine MPs on Tuesday held a meeting with National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula in his capacity as the chair of PSC in a bid to push for their welfare.
The speaker promised that he will ensure that the MPs have offices in parliament to facilitate their work while in Nairobi. This is after Wetang’ula committed to ensuring proper constitutional amendment is done to that effect.
The MPs through their chairman Kanini Kega requested to have an office in Nairobi with a budget, car mortgage and transport allowance among other issues.
“We have some administrative things that I can be able to do by exercising my discretion and have you get offices once members move in the newly built offices where you can conduct your issues privately,” Wetang’ula said.
He also promised to engage Attorney General Justin Muturi on how to go about the process. “I wish in the near future we will have EALA members being elected by Members of the East African Community,” he said.
The process, he said, will require scrutiny of the constitutional provisions and structural changes put in place to have some of the requests given by the MPs.
The move according to Wetang’ula will ensure the welfare of the nine members representing Kenyan in the regional Parliament is well taken care of. Other EALA MPs present were Zipporah Kering, Kennedy Musyoka, Iman Falhada Deko, Shahbal Said Suleiman and Godfrey Maina.
Wetang’ula promised to meet with the EAC CS Rebecca Miano to ensure that the EALA MPs have a budget that will enable them in delivering their mandate and assist them to have access to the member’s gym facility among other services.
He said should the move succeed, he will put down a list of the demands presented by the MPs and present it to the EAC Ministry to ensure budgetary allocation.
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