Senators now want the National Treasury to expedite the release of Sh2.4 billion owed to former councillors in an ex-gratia (by favour) payment.
The development comes after the Senate Labour and Social Protection Committee criticised the national government for delaying payment of the one-off honorarium to 12,000 former councillors. Each was to receive Sh200,000.
The committee, chaired by West Pokot Senator Julius Murgor, was told that the former councillors have been pursuing the payment since 2013, with several dying without receiving any coin from a government they diligently served.
The committee was taken aback by photos of one such councillor, David Njoroge Mwangi, who was carrying his 11-month old baby.
Kilifi Senator Stewart Madzayo, a retired judge who most probably presided over many harrowing cases during his time as a judge, broke down in tears while looking at the photos.
In his heyday as Market Ward councilor between 1992 and 1997, in the defunct Eldoret Municipal Council, Mr Mwangi had two wives but his earnings plummeted with time.
His first wife abandoned him, leaving him with the second wife with whom he had four children.
Defying the old adage that lightning does not strike the same place twice, the second wife also fled, leaving the ex-councillor with the children, one only 11 months old at the time.
Struggling to fend for the children, they were taken away from him by an orphanage at the intervention of residents who witnessed his plight. One burden had been lifted but Mr Mwangi still battled solitude and betrayal.
The National Councillors Forum (NCF), a caucus of former councillors, told the committee that Mr Mwangi’s case was not an isolated one but an example of what they were going through.
Geoffrey Gitau, chair of the National Councillors Forum, before the Senate Standing Committee on Labour and Social Welfare, at the KICC in Nairobi on March 16, 2023.
NCF chairperson Geoffrey Gitau, himself a former councillor, told the committee that most of them were abandoned by their families after the pomp of their youth and the “peanuts” they earned while in office dried up.
Frail and struggling to cope with old age, the chair said they regretted that the same government they served religiously also turned its back on them.
He noted that they have been shunned by successive governments since 2013 when they started fighting for the ex-gratia payment, also shunning them.
With nowhere to turn, some of the ex-councillors had to face life in solitude, the chairman said.
Dr Gitau added that this year alone, they have lost 30 ex-councillors as they wait for the government to pay them their Sh4.4 billion one-off honorarium and monthly pension.
When they started the push in 2013, he said, they numbered more than 12,000 but now only about 8,000 of them are still alive, the majority being senior citizens.
“Many of us have died and more continue to die. Some have also been abandoned by their families and are living a life of solitude. You feel sad every time we converge to bury a former colleague,” Dr Gitau said, adding they live in abject poverty.
“Most councillors served at a time when there was no Constituency Development Fund, so the little money they got went into fundraisers for various programmes in their areas, leaving them with nothing.”
He pointed out that the ex-councillors who served between 1963 and 2012 initially sought an honorarium of Sh1.5 million each, which would have totalled Sh14.4 billion.
However, a task force formed to look into their welfare recommended that they be paid each Sh550,000 and the National Treasury further slashed the amount to the current Sh200,000.
In 2021, the then Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani told senators that an inter-agency task-force report put the former councillors’’ number at 12,247 and that it would cost Sh18.3 billion to pay them a one-off gratuity/lump sum, going by the Sh1.5 million recommended by the Senate.
The recommended monthly pension would cost Sh4.4 billion in the first year of implementation, computed at the rate of Sh30,000 per month for each beneficiary.
In total therefore, he said, the exchequer would spend Sh22.7 billion, being the lump sum plus the monthly pension, in the first year of implementation of the Senate resolution.
The former councillors earned Sh60 a month in 1963, which was then enhanced to Sh320, and then to Sh1,200 in the 1980s. This was later increased to Sh3,600 with more agitation from the councillors.
In 2002, the pay had been increased to Sh20,000 and the late President Mwai Kibaki enhanced the package by Sh5,000.
In contrast, the MCAs who replaced the councillors in 2013, with the advent of devolution, earned more than five times what they did, excluding benefits and allowances.
Dr William Komen, Kabatnet-Soi Ward ex-councillor said, “We used to do even four harambees in a day as we served our people but now some of us cannot even be attended to in the dispensaries we fought hard to establish.”
The NCF vice chairperson recalled how an old colleague had to queue for hours as he waited for treatment as no one cared who he was.
Mr Yatani had committed to factor in the ex-gratia payment in the financial year ending June 2023 but that never happened.
“We served the people with all our hearts but Yatani showed us he has no heart to help any human being. Patriots we were but now we walk around in sandals as we struggle with biting poverty,” said Amos Gitonga, ex-councillor of the defunct Ol Kalou Town Ward.
Mr Thomas Chepkiyeng, Kapkong’a Ward ex-council'or added: “We sacrificed a lot to establish the infrastructure the MCAs are now enjoying, to the extent of forgetting about our welfare, but now we have been shunned and are being treated with disdain.”
John Kimilu, representing the Ukambani area, said, “We are going through a lot. Even this suit I am putting on is borrowed.”
Kiserian ex-councillor Ambrose Kago said, “We are now old but remember you are also heading down the same path. We have held many meetings and written many letters but we are being taken round in circles,”
The ex-councillors also want to be enrolled for the National Hospital Insurance Fund as most of them are elderly and battling diseases.
Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei said Parliament approved the payment in 2021 and that it was to be factored into the current financial year.
Senator Murgor said, “We will do whatever it takes to make sure you get your dues.”
