Premium

MPs should go on strike and not return because they are a burden

When it comes to increasing their allowances, they are as thick as thieves, which they are anyway, for, why would anyone earn an extra allowance for sitting at their place of work and doing what they were elected to do? Why would people who say they seek votes in order to serve Kenyans ask for extra payment for vetting State officers, yet that is one of the duties they are elected to perform on behalf of Kenyans?

That they have said they will refrain from any engagements on any business, until and unless funds are disbursed, is in itself a cruel joke. They are acting as if they work so hard for Kenyans, and if they stop, we will miss many good things. First, if they were so important and hardworking, Kenyans would not be starving or losing their animals due to drought because they would have come up with interventions all these years.

They claim that their voters are waiting for the monies to take their children to school, which are about to close anyway - and weren't people educating their children even when there was no NG-CDF? If they are such wonderful people, why haven't they passed laws that ensure education is affordable, or even free at all levels?

It can be argued that times are lean and the cost of education is high, so parents need help, but isn't the situation worse because MPs rubberstamped bad laws and failed to play their oversight role of keeping the Executive in check?

Instead of listening to the people, they listened to the Executive, and defended all the bad laws and directives, which is more proof that their selfish selves never work for Kenyans. Also, since they only do the Executive's bidding regardless of what we think or want, why can't we just deal directly with the Executive so that all the monies they are paid above and under the table and in the toilets as brokers can be channeled to our needs?

Kenyans need to rise against these bunch of hooligans for lack of a better term, and encourage them to go on strike or resign and go earn a living elsewhere like other Kenyans do. Leading the charge for this lame attempt at blackmailing Kenyans is Opiyo Wandayi, the Minority Leader and MP for Ugunja in the larger Ugenya area of Siaya County. Even as he rants that he will move MPs to refrain from any engagements, people in his constituency have been denied easy access to markets because of what seems to be a pothole.

A colonial-era bridge across River Nzoia connecting his constituency to Ugenya Constituency, which is represented by David Ochieng, is currently closed after a hole appeared on its deck, meaning traders are incurring extra costs because they have to use circuitous routes to sell their cows at Nzoia market or their produce in other markets in the two constituencies.

That bridge has affected Ochieng's voters too, and if MPs were so beneficial to Kenyans, these two would have petitioned the Kenya National Highways Authority to hoist the deck on a new bridge which has been under construction for close to six years.

The abutments and piers were completed before the Ugunja-Ukwala-Rwambwa road across the bridge was commissioned, and the deck of the new bridge has been lying on the approach slab since the new road was opened almost three years ago.

Wandayi and Ochieng would have pushed for the deck to be hoisted, but no. It is fashionable for Wandayi to rant in Nairobi about a strike and for Ochieng to run around the country wailing that Luos have to work with the president, as if that is what he was elected to do.

That just proves how useless MPs are and their going on strike will not even stop Ugenya people from distilling export quality chang'aa - even though standards have gone down during the terms of Ochieng and Wandayi.