Drama as MCA’s Art and Craft benchmarking tour aborts

Nominated MCA Elizabeth Kivae and her colleagues who cut short their trip to Mombasa due to wrangles in the culture department address the press in Embu town yesterday. [Joseph Muchiri/Standard]

Some members of the county assembly were left stranded at the Machakos-Mombasa Road junction after reportedly falling out with county executives.

The Gender, Culture, Children and Social Services committee had been invited for a bench-marking tour of handicraft industries in Mombasa County.

Culture and Social Services Executive Joan Mwende sent an official letter to the ward reps last Thursday.

However, according to the MCAs, another county official disregarded their invitation letter and ordered that they be left behind.

The turn of events saw some MCAs, plus the assigned clerk, terminate their journey midway.

But a source in the county government claimed trouble arose after the MCAs demanded to be paid their allowances on the spot.

Public means

The MCAs were stranded for hours in Machakos without alternative means of transport back to Embu, but eventually managed to take public means to Matuu, then Kiritiri and eventually Embu.

Nominated MCA Sicily Warue, the committee’s chairperson, said they disembarked from the bus after realising that there was intense infighting within the Gender ministry; over control of the Sh15 million kitty set aside for improvement of the county art and craft sector.

Speaking at the county assembly after the aborted tour, Warue added she did not wish her committee to get entangled in administrative tussles involving county government officials.

Warue also cautioned the executives against dragging the assembly in their administrative disputes.

County Assembly Clerk Jim Kauma confirmed that some ward reps terminated their journey midway, but was quick to mention that the cause of the fiasco would be addressed administratively.