Former councillors have finally got their way in the push for a retirement package after the National Treasury agreed to pay them Sh2.6 billion.
Treasury CS Ukur Yatani Thursday said they will pay the former councillors the cash, a one-off gratuity-in the next financial due to hard economic times brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Yatani announced the planned payment during a meeting with Senate Labour and Social Welfare committee that was a petition by the councillors lobby to push the State to act on their plight.
They have been pushing for a one-off gratuity and monthly payments, a demand that would have seen the taxpayers raise Sh22 billion for the former councillors.
They petitioned the senate back in 2016 through Laikipia Senator John Kinyua. The House then passed a resolution to get the lot paid.
But this did not happen.
In February, Kitui Senator Enoch Wambua revived the matter, leading to the announcement by the Treasury CS.
“Many former councillors live in abject poverty, yet they worked for this country tirelessly,” Kinyua had said.
The lot had demanded a Sh1.5 million one-off payment and Sh30, 000 monthly pensions.
However, Yatani rejected the demand citing the shrinking revenues due to under collections by the taxman.
The CS said all former councillors who served for more than four terms-about 328-will be paid Sh664,000 each in a one-off payment while those who served for less than four terms-11,919-will be paid Sh200,000 each.
The group is among the more than 12,000 former councillors who served from 1963 to 2013.
The committee chaired by Nairobi Senator Johnson Sakaja welcomed the announcement.
They however decried the fact that the councillors will have to wait for another one year before they get their benefits.
They also held that the threshold set by the Treasury of four consecutive terms was too high.
“To serve for four consecutive terms is meant to lockout as many councillors as possible, and for them to wait for another one year to get Sh100,000 is too little too late and doesn’t speak to any respect at all,” Wambua said.
The senators asked the CS to prepare a supplementary budget and send it to Parliament to pay the former councillors in the current financial year.
They argued that most of them are old, others are sick while others struggling to put food on the table.
However, the CS maintained that it was impossible to make the payments in the current financial year.
“It’s quite easy to say that I bring supplementary budget, but that won’t be realistic, we can’t give want we can’t afford,” he said.
“The decision by the court stopping charging of minimum tax has already caused a Sh22 billion dent in our budget we will have to revise most of our budgets”
Outgoing Devolution CS Eugene Wamalwa asked the councillors to accept the offer as given by the Treasury.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
