Robinson Njeru Githae

All parliamentary appearances

Entries 2231 to 2240 of 2672.

• 28 Jan 2009 in National Assembly: As I speak now, there is a team in Mombasa composed of officials from my Ministry and the Attorney-General's Chamber who are going through the Local Government Act, so as to come up with the necessary amendments. We, as a Ministry, have taken the decision that we are no longer going to wait for the new Constitution. We have been saying that all the amendments to the Local Government Act should wait until we have a new Constitution because it would provide for the way the Local Authorities would operate. For example, it would address the issue of whether it ... view
• 28 Jan 2009 in National Assembly: It may be a good idea to start with the history of how this issue came about. The local authorities started with the Nairobi City Council. Here, we had what we called the City Fathers. The City Fathers were retired old men, who were rich and required no salary. They were doing the work on voluntary basis. That has been the history of the Local Government. Even when other areas were created, that was the model that the councillors now, who are not referred as City Fathers remained. They were supposed to be rich retired men who did not require ... view
• 28 Jan 2009 in National Assembly: 4470 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES January, 28, 2009 view
• 28 Jan 2009 in National Assembly: are young and educated. They are graduates. Some of them, that is their first job since they graduated. Therefore, we must take cognisant of that fact. We have a new crop of councillors. They must be given the respect due to them. At the same time, we must take cognisant of the fact that there are no plots to be dished out by councillors because that is how they used to pay themselves. There are no plots for councillors to dish to themselves. They require the assistance of the Central Government. The only thing they are, probably, dishing out now ... view
• 28 Jan 2009 in National Assembly: We have also visited our neighbours and seen that they are way ahead of us as far as their local governments are concerned. In Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, for example, their systems work very well. Once a constituency is created, it automatically becomes a district and a local authority. In fact, the area Member of Parliament is an ex-officio councillor of the local authority. The system works very well in those countries because they have done a lot of reforms. In these countries, you will find that all the employees who are paid, transferred, promoted and employed by the ... view
• 28 Jan 2009 in National Assembly: Therefore, we must take cognisance of this. In fact, in the English language there are only two people who are worshipped. One of them is the mayor. That is why we refer to a mayor as "His worship the mayor." It is a very important title and, therefore, we must recognise this. view
• 28 Jan 2009 in National Assembly: Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, having realised that the old system of the local government is not working, what should we come up with? There have been various suggestions on how to go about this. For example, if you look at the current position, you will find that in some local authorities, some mayors or chairmen are being paid as little as Kshs10,000 and others as high as Kshs500,000. What we are proposing in the new policy - which we are preparing and will be brought to this House for adoption - is that we have categories. This is because ... view
• 28 Jan 2009 in National Assembly: Again, under the current Local Government Act, there is no local authority known as a city. The highest is a municipal. So, again, we are trying to amend the law, so that we include the cities. So, although Mombasa, Kisumu and Eldoret were elevated to cities, they cannot be given that recognition because it is not there in the Local Government Act. Nairobi was special and it was given a Charter by Her Majesty the Queen. We have no intention of going back to the Queen to tell her to give Mombasa and Kisumu charters. So, we want to amend ... view
• 28 Jan 2009 in National Assembly: Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, having said that we need to change the way local authorities operate, then what should be the solution? The Motion calls for payment of salaries by the central Government. But the danger is that if we have local authorities being paid by the central Government, then what is the rationale for their existence? They may as well be taken over by the central Government. What we were going to suggest in the new policy is that, probably, we increase the Local Authorities Transfer Fund (LATF). At the moment, local authorities are getting more than Kshs19 billion ... view
• 28 Jan 2009 in National Assembly: On a point of order, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker. We have all read this Report. We know what happened. Therefore, what we are interested in is--- view