Meru County Govt to Build Sh300m House for Governor??? Who Will Save Our Cash?
I am very appalled by the Meru County leadership to use tax-payers money for extravagance and luxurious lifestyle of its Governor. The amount is colossal-Ksh.300m. This cash belong to very poor people of Kenya and its expected to be used to better the lives of the poor. Not long ago the Kilifi County wasted over Kshs.140m buying a house for its Governor.
Kilifi has one of the poorest population in Kenya but that did not bother Kingi using the cash belonging to the poor to excite himself with such extravagance. Seeing nothing happened to Kingi, Governor Munya of Meru is spending double of Governor Kingi's extravagance for his house. In Kisumu, the Governor wanted Ksh. 75million for his house. I thank some MCAs who rejected this and reduced it to Ksh.10m (a big amount still!). It pains me to see tax-payers hard earned cash being spend in such thoughtless, lavish, gluttonous and wasteful manner. This insatiable appetite and desires for lifestyles and goodies that are beyond our national means as a country is unwise.
Ni tamaa mbaya sana.
If 90% of Kenyans were millionaires, such expenditure is understandable. BUT in a country where 95% do not have a car, live in shanties, and majority live in extreme poverty, such expense is a misplaced priority. Look at Meru! Only 54,000 students are enrolled in secondary school against 336,000 in primary schools. Almost 50% of the people in Meru are illiterate and only 12% have secondary education. Many patients share single beds in hospitals and for quite a while bodies were decomposing at Meru Level 5 Hospital mortuary (and OMG - it had 160 bodies piled up there instead of 20) as the cold room broke down forcing neighbourhood families flee their homes.
Unemployment and poverty are high. These are the issues that need fixing first and foremost. But these are issues which do not bother the Governor, the MCAs, etc more than having a mansion with a swimming pool, saunas, etc. The British PM lives in a house build in 1682-=325 years old. I am sure our Meru, Kilifi, etc Governors and MCAs would say such house is too old and is not modern! hence build a new one. Official residences of even Heads of States of richer countries do not waste public funds providing such luxuries.
Worse how often will the Governor use the sauna, swimming pools, etc? Very few times if any hence a waste of our cash for using funds on facilities that will be hardly used. And remember the cost of maintaining such a house, swimming pools, etc will be colossal. So each year, we shall be footing a huge bill for maintaining this hardly used Ksh.300million house. These house may turn out to be a cash-cow venture. You remember the Deputy President House? the initial cost was Ksh.197m, then rose to Ksh.383m, then to Ksh.400m etc. And within 6months after being commissioned, we were told it needed "repairs" costing anything upto Ksh.100m-200m! There is a cause of concern with these Governors house. The final figure may be anybody's guess! You also remember that a Senator sold a house for our Chief Justice at a cost of Ksh.310m in 2013. The Chief Justice has never moved in and the house paid by our cash is wasting away. Worse millions are being spend on "renovations" but no such work is seen. A cash cow house? I can go on and on.
The Government paid about Ksh.40m, Ksh. 421m-etc for rents in various buildings yet, for some, 6months down the line not a single officer moved in. The cost to equip Meru Governor's Ksh.300m house will be colossal. I urge Kenyans to rise up and stop this wastage yet our hospitals have no drugs, our dead ones are subjected to such indignities and disrespect in morgues, our youths have no jobs, etc. This is why Chama Cha Maslahi Ya Wananchi Wa Kenya will put your interests first before any comforts of its elected leaders- the President, MPs, Senators, Governors, MCAs, etc. We shall never spend your taxes in such strange manner. After we have secured the comfort of all of us as Kenyans where we all live in dignity, then we can have these additional comforts.
That time is not yet considering our present day economic conditions of our families.
Rais-Mtarajiwa Daktari Mburu JM
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