Are MPs in order to reject salary cuts proposed by SRC?

Reducing legislators’ salaries is not only unconstitutional and demeaning, but an affront by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) to parliamentarians’ mental health.

SRC should have first waited for us to take oath of office and consult us before coming up with a revised salary schedule. Labour laws and human resource regulations across the globe stipulate that salaries for employees can only be maintained, not reduced.

SRC has never held a meeting with MPs to tell them that their salaries would be reduced. We will resist such a single-sourced move meant to make us paupers, yet we have many responsibilities as MPs to meet.

Reducing MPs’ salaries and perks will mean that they now earn less than an army brigade and a deputy police commissioner, whose jobs are below MPs on the pecking order.

The SRC move to slash legislators’ salaries without seeking their views is in breach of law as set out in the Constitution; that at least 100 MPs sign the agreement. This has not been done.

We are going to take the battle to the august House and I know we shall triumph. SRC is trying to win the support of some leaders but this will not work. We shall even take the matter to court and we shall win. Nowhere in the world have salaries of employees been reduced. In the new salary scale proposed by SRC, MPs will earn Sh621,000, down from Sh710,000 per month.

Speakers of National Assembly and Senate will earn Sh1.155 million, down from Sh1.32 million, and their deputies will take home Sh924,000, not Sh1.056 million.

Odhiambo is the MP Elect-Gem Constituency

The move by some MPs to reject the reduced salaries is an abuse to majority of Kenyans who stood on queues for long hours to vote for them.

Kenyans expected them to deal with matters that affect the entire population rather than focus on selfish pursuits.

The country has a high figure of educated unemployed youth who cannot even afford a day’s meal. Some of the young men and women have now turned to crime to make ends meet. It is not their wish that they mug people in the hope that they can get some coins to keep life going.

Parents who have spent millions of shillings paying fees for their children have gone into depression because they hoped that their children would help them in their old age. But they wake up every day and have to work hard to provide for them since there are no jobs.

What we expect from our MPs is to make laws that will create jobs for all Kenyans, particularly the youth. It is disappointing to reject Sh700,000 as salary yet there are many people who can’t even get a Sh10,000 job.

Kenyans should lobby for the return of the recall clause that was expunged from the Constitution by the same MPs so that when they digress from working for the people, we recall them immediately, instead of waiting for five years.

Atienoh is a graduate of Journalism from Maseno University.