Economy

Independent party winners to head plum House teams committees

parlaiment

Political parties that will not be part of the new government after this week's general election will control key committees in Parliament, opening competition for posts that come with lucrative perks.

The National Assembly and the Senate created new committees that will be exclusively chaired by members of political parties not forming government or legislators who enter the House on independent tickets.

The 13th Parliament, which will be sworn in before September 9, will have seven additional committees in the National Assembly and three in the Senate.

There are 34 committees in the Assembly currently and 20 in the Senate.

The increase in the number of committees means extra benefits for committee chairpersons and members. The outgoing MPs created seven new committees in the National Assembly, five of which will be chaired by lawmakers from a political party not forming government.

The new assembly committees are the Public Debt and Privatisation Committee, the Diaspora Affairs and Migrant Workers, the Decentralized Accounts Fund Committee and the Public Petitions Committee.

The Public Investments Committee (PIC) has been split into three committees and will all be chaired by members of the minority party formerly known as the opposition.

The PIC on Commercial Affairs and Energy will oversight and examine audited reports of key ministries and State agencies in the energy, environment as well as general economic and commercial affairs.

The PIC on Governance and Education will deal with ministries and agencies overseeing the education, defence, governance, justice and law and order sectors

The Special Funds Accounts Committee, whose chairperson is reserved for a member elected under independent ticket was also split to create the committee on Decentralised Fund.

The Decentralised Funds committee to be chaired by a member not from a political party forming government will oversight the MPs, control National Government Constituencies Fund (NG-CDF), the National Government Affirmative Action (NGAAF) Fund and their respective boards.

“The splitting of the mandate of the committee is intended to ease the workload of the Special Funds Accounts Committee (SFAC),” the report of the Procedure and House Rules committee states.

The National Assembly has 349 MPs while the Senate has 67 members.

The gross pay for an MP is Sh426,000 basic pay, Sh150,000 house allowance and Sh134,000 in salary market adjustment.

The SRC defines salary market adjustment, which applies to the other state officers. A salary modification takes into account market positioning, and constitutional and statutory principles on review of remuneration and benefits.

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