President Uhuru Kenyatta must now dialogue with workers, says Atwoli

COTU Secretary General Francis Atwoli [PHOTO: CHRISPEWN SECHERE]

MIGORI COUNTY: The Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Cotu) has revived demands for dialogue with President Uhuru Kenyatta to discuss how to tackle various challenges facing workers.

"We want to sit with the President as workers of this country. We have a lot of questions that we would want him to provide answers to," said Cotu Secretary General Francis Atwoli.

He also accused the Jubilee Government of engaging in open corruption through what he termed as fraudulent tendering processes.

"It is an open secret that contractors and bidders in Government tenders must cough up millions of cash for them to be considered for the contracts, in which most of them lose out," said Mr Atwoli.

He said it was high time the President engaged all workers in the country to reassure them that issues affecting them would be resolved.

"All the workers in this country want to get assurance of commitment by the Government to end the kind of corruption that is thriving like never before and assurance that the Government has changed from its corrupt way of doing things," said Atwoli.

He said investors were being scared away by the way in which the Government was engaging them.

He said the process of hand-picking contractors for public projects had exposed the ills in the Government.

He further launched a scathing attack on Cabinet Secretary Kazungu Kambi whom he branded as an "idler" earning money "for doing nothing".

Atwoli was speaking at the weekend during the burial of the mother in-law of CORD leader Raila Odinga at Stella village in Uriri Constituency in Migori County.