Salary increase an insult to taxpayers

Daily Nation Editorial
Publication Date: 09/12/2006

Parliament shocked everybody on Thursday, when it awarded President Kibaki a massive salary rise and only put on hold proposals to give higher allowances to the Vice-President, Cabinet ministers, assistant ministers, House Speaker and MPs.

It was surprising that the members could think of anything so obnoxious as increasing their earnings when everybody else in the public sector is being asked to tighten their belts and when thousands of Kenyans go hungry.

A number of things were baffling about this whole thing. First, the President has not asked for any pay rise, so one wonders what motivated the award. Two, the Head of State is sufficiently cushioned financially as all his needs are taken care of by the taxpayers such that he really does not need any big pay.

As for the VP, ministers and MPs, the mere thought that they can award themselves further allowances is not only annoying but amounts to spiting the taxpayers. Here are members of a Parliament that has performed ridiculously poor in the past four years, yet it has a ravenous hunger for money.

How can they think of giving themselves such obscene allowances when the rank and file of workers are languishing in poverty? Take the case of the university lecturers, who just called off their month-long strike over poor pay last week.

All along, they have been told that the State has no additional cash to give then a pay boost. Where then did it get the money for this increase? Where is the fairness and how can the State convince anyone that it cares for all its workers?

The ministers and MPs have got so many new packages in the past three years that one is alarmed at their appetite for money. Yet, there is no commensurate service they offer their voters.

This is a national outrage, which is why Kenyans must demand for a system that locks out MPs from the task of determining their own salaries.