Wamaiyu appeals to President Kenyatta to address plight of ex-councillors

President Uhuru Kenyatta has been urged to come to the plight of the seemingly forgotten former councillors who are facing serious financial strain with some wallowing in abject poverty.

Former chairman of the defunct Mwingi County Council, Musyoka Wanzili, said on Tuesday that former civic leaders now bank on President Kenyatta’s magnanimity to rescue the from the fiscal doldrums they currently find themselves in.

The positions of councillors who represented wards since Kenya’s independence 1963 were scrapped in 2013 with the advent of devolution and the creation of alternative positions of Member of County Assemblies. Ever since, some of the former councillors have not fitted the bill of being elected as MCAs.

Wanzili who is fondly known as Wamaiyu is bitter that even as ex-MPs enjoy retirement benefits after hanging their political boots, the plight formers councillors has been ignored. “We have literally been reduced to children of a lesser God which is pretty unfair,” said the former civic leaders.

“You might take it as a joke but many former councillors have resigned to fate and live in abject squalor unable to meet basic needs. Many are terminally ill but cannot meet the cost of quality healthcare and slowly wait to die,” regrets Wanzili.

He further lamented that it was sad that the former civic leaders are suffering even after the Senate awarded them a retirement package and monthly pension over six years ago.

Retirement package

Speaking in Kitui, the former civic boss wondered why the government has not found it feasible to implement the 2015 Senate decision to award all the former law makers in the then local government a KSh. 18Billion retirement package.

According to the retirement package approved by the Senate, each of the former civic leaders who served since 1963 who earn a severance amount of KSh. 1.5Million and will all be entitled to a KSh. 30,000 monthly pension.

“I am appealing to President Kenyatta because he is the only persons who can order the payments meant for the suffering former councillors. The president is responsible of ensuring the welfare of all Kenyans and the ex-councillors cannot be excluded,” said Wanzili.

He said it was extremely unfair to handle the issue of the retirement package for the ex-civic leaders contemptuously well it is too happy to shower formers MPs with similar package. “This is unacceptable discrimination as we served the people of Kenya just as the MPs did,” said Wanzili.

By MWINGI TIMES CORRESPONDENT