Luo Nyanza MPs are not doing enough to improve the lives of their people.

They seem to believe the Constituency Development Fund is an end to itself. They are content with the distribution of the funds and gleefully report how much has been disbursed.

But they fail to be innovative and initiate self-sustaining economic activities that can improve the lives of their people.

Farmers work hard. They have planted large acreages with sugarcane in the Muhoroni-Chemelil sugar belt. But the two factories keep under-performing.

There are constant break downs and the optimum crushing capacity is never attained. The access roads are impassable and after a little rain, many farmers lose their cane, the hauliers having fallen by the roadsides.

It is absurd that excepting two, all the other leaders, even those whose constituents depend solely on sugarcane farming, boycotted a meeting chaired recently by Agriculture Minister William Ruto to discuss the impending privatisation of the Muhoroni, Chemelil and Miwani factories.

Politics aside, it was their constituents’ lives that were being discussed and only when decisions are made will they start crying.

Then there are the rice irrigation schemes and cotton farming, not to mention the fish industry. Why, then, are the Luo still hungry with all this wealth?

I recently toured Usenge and Osieko beaches, where the economic mainstay is supposed to be fishing. There were a number of fishing boats that had landed and many more were expected. A number of refrigerated trucks were waiting for the fish.

But I was surprised I could not buy a single fish because the entire catch was destined for Nairobi. Stranger is the fact that fish is almost three times more expensive at the shores of Lake Victoria than at Gikomba market in Nairobi.

Why don’t leaders help their constituents form co-operative societies that could own the fish and refrigeration trucks? This way, they could by-pass the middlemen.

Why do they let traders come all the way from Nairobi to buy their fish, yet they are going hungry? After all, users do not go to Meru to pick the miraa; the traders bring it to them.

Wake up, Luo leaders and stop hanging onto Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s coattails. That is why you boycotted Ruto’s meeting.

{Walter Kondik, Watamu}