Why easing the wage bill burden should be collective responsibility

By Alexander Chagema 

If anybody exemplifies lack of intellectual depth to engage in sober debates beneficial to the country and its citizens, it is a majority of the pampered Kenyan Members of Parliament. Don’t get me wrong, there is no death of academic degrees and diplomas in the august House, yet it has been turned into a platform for retribution and a noisy market place. When MPs are not shouting at Governors, they will be ranting at the Senate, upstaging the Executive and berating the Judiciary.

Summonses to various parliamentary committees with nothing better to do than witch hunt had, until the president pointed out in ire, become the in-thing. Truly, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The National Assembly, mandated by law to formulate and pass laws, is no longer engaged in legislative matters. It is easier for parliamentarians to discuss who flies national flags on their official car, who controls which funds at the county level, and male libido than security and education. Every parliamentarian has become an economist of sorts. Economic discourse (their economics) happens to be the only subject that evokes the principal of collective responsibility in them. Collective because they aim to collect as much money as they can before the uncertainties of 2017 blur their vision, assuming they had any in the first place.

As so often said and aptly put politics is a dirty game. Naturally, it follows therefore that the players are even more sordid, what with all that dirt rubbing off on them.

Could it be that the whole aim of politics is to keep a befuddled populace thoroughly alarmed by constantly menacing it, Kenyan style, with an endless series of scandals and fears, to distract it from the avarice, inadequacies and failures of its leaders as they pilfer?

The Members of Parliament’s preoccupation with monetary issues is not informed by their desire for the proper management of financial resources under the devolved system of governance but rather by an inherent belief that every election won is an advance ticket to grab and recoup campaign losses. With the salary MPs get, they are still intent on getting more, yet some citizens, in far flung areas from Nairobi, eat mongrels and cats either because they don’t have any money or the Government cannot supply enough food in drought stricken area.

President Uhuru Kenyatta has decried the huge wage bill that has eaten into the exchequer continuously crippling any meaningful economic development. Thus, austerity measures are necessary to arrest the downward trend of our economic projections year in year out. It is preposterous for the Kenya Revenue Authority to continue collecting taxes every year just to end up paying salaries as opposed to service provision. The envisaged double digit growth of the economy cannot be realised if a handful of mean spirited individuals pausing as honorable Members of Parliament have their thick sticky fingers permanently in the till.

Members of Parliament in Britain not only earn way below the Sh1 million plus monthly salary our legislators take home, they pay taxes and considering that Britain is a developed country with a higher cost of living than Kenya , it is sheer lunacy for MPs to complain of poor pay while earning Sh1 million monthly and this , for making rhetoric and technical appearances in Parliament. Barely one year ago, many of the MPs were desperate fellows unable to make ends meet but all of a sudden Sh1 million is peanuts to them.

The President, the Deputy President, Cabinet Secretaries and Principal Secretaries ‘voluntarily’ took pay cuts and we expect the Senators, Members of Parliament and Members of the County Assemblies who have been agitating for increased salaries, car grants and mortgages to follow suit . Alleviating the wage bill burden should be a collective responsibility starting from the top downwards.