verbatim report of constituency public hearings ... - ConstitutionNet

85Wachira Mwago: Thank you very much Commissioner. My first point is towards the commission itself. We are gettingworried by the disagreement we are having in public, in the TV and we get afraid whether you shall really finish the work. Willyou please disagree in private and have a spokesman who will tell us you know…..things might be mistaken out. One party willsay this and the other one will say that. My point number one is on the retirees. There is a colleague who had said retirees areforgotten. We would like to have the retirees remembered whenever there is a review of salaries. When a retiree has died, hisspouse is given only five years. Is it possible for the Commission to look at it and pay the spouse for life because he or she isdependent on the other one.NHIF funds: This money should cater for everybody including even those people who are not working. We normally seepeople on TV who are begging for money and they are Kenyans. You find some sympathetic cases of people who are veryseriously sick and they can’t be treated in Kenya and there are Kenya National Hospitals. We are getting worried about this.We have so many boards - like the Dairy Board, like the Coffee Board, that really refuse the farmers their freedom. You findfor example the Dairy Board arresting farmers when they come to sell their milk. Is it possible for these things to be abolished,because they are colonial. People should be left to deal with their produce as they like - To sell wherever they want.Salaries: We have had some people giving themselves very high salaries and forgetting other people. I would like to suggest thatthe salaries be pegged on the lowest paid person in that Ministry - so that the highest paid person should not be paid more thanthirty times the lowest paid because the highest paid is the one who is making the decisions. The sweeper is not making thedecision. So if he gives himself one million, then the lowest paid person should get thirty thousand automatically.Licenses: We have a lot of corruption whenever we go to get licenses. Take for example, vehicle licenses. You go through somany problems. I suggest that all licenses should be given at one point to avoid corruption. So if you are getting driving license,and so on, you go to one person instead of being thrown here, go here, you see one person, you see another one and all thetime you are being asked for “kitu kidogo. “Imports to Kenya of produce that is produced in Kenya should be controlled and if possible banished so that our farmers andother producers may have a market for their things.We hear that things like maize brought by from outside are sold at a lower price and when we read the newspapers, we findthat their governments subsidize the production of those goods. Why can’t our government also subsidize the produce of thingslike maize, wheat and so on?The Government should reduce taxation on things like fertilizers, fungicides, so that we produceour things cheaply. We read of incompetent heads of Parastatals or even Secondary schools; and you hear that a headmaster ofa certain school where students are failing every year, the following year, is still being kept………Com. Keriako Tobiko: What is you recommendation?