The Anchor, October 2008

These are the stories featuring in The Anchor, October issue.

How looting of teachers Sacco is linked to Knut branch

FOR the first time in history, there is an acknowledgement that the Masaku Teachers Sacco is dying.

This is contained in an official document that The Anchor has laid its hands on. It catalogues a rip off running to Sh 151 million and lists 11 companies that were paid hefty sums of money as suppliers and contractors.

The document- a report of the former Supervisory Committee Chairman Edrick Ngunzi- exposes vicious scramble for sacco millions between staff of all cadres-permanent, casuals and even those on attachment on the one hand and top managers, officials and suppliers on the other. Ngunzi con­cludes: “They, in collaboration with suppliers looted the society coffers dry”.

The officials and suppliers are listed in the report that we run word by word as delivered by Mr Ngunzi after which delegates endorsed it and called for action to make all face the law.

So what are the names behind these firms that supplied whatever they did to the society? Well, that is fodder for coming days! Sadly, the Machakos Branch of the Kenya National Union of Teachers, which is supposed to protect teachers’ interests saw nothing and did nothing.

Today, the society lies in the ICU fighting for its life. A last minute move purported to save the sacco has only half filled the oxygen cylinder for the patient. Yet a report detailing who stole what remains hidden in the offices of the Knut , the society and the District Co-operative officers. The now the impending Knut elections in Machakos become relevant to making a decision that may have a lasting effect on the health of the sacco. The replacements that teachers chose in the elections mid this month will decide if the teachers want the sacco to live.

(See stories on Page 3, 8 and 9)

VP parts ways with old allies, MPs and aides in…

The big fall out!

VICE PRESIDENT Kalonzo Musyoka has parted ways with virtually all of his foot soldiers who played cru­cial roles in his campaigns in his failed bid for the Presidency. Those he has discarded from his inner core in­clude MPs, former MPs and Personal Assistants. Since his appointment as VP, Kalonzo has parted ways with Mutitu MP Kiema Kilonzo, Yatta MP Charles Kilonzo and close MP allies- Gideon Ndambuki, Benson Mbai, Philip Kaloki and David Musila have coiled up to serve their voters without appearing on the coat-tails of the VP in every other function.

Former MPs who have given up on him for varied reasons include former Machakos Town MP Mwanzia Daudi, former Kilome MP Mutinda Mutiso and former Kangundo MP Moffat Maitha- all of whom feel that they lost their seats due to the work they did for Mr Musyoka to the extend that their con­stitu­ents felt that they had ignored them in pref­erence to cam­paigning for Mr Musyoka- yet the VP has seen no use for them afterwards.

In the build up to the elections, the three MPs styled themselves as fore­runners- some mine sweepers of some sorts or the Presidents’ Ad­vance Party. They were willing to flatten any­one who spoke against Mr Musyoka. So overzealous was their support that Mr Musyoka at one time ac­knowl­edged that they be­haved like his body­guards.

Well, that is no more. Mwanzia is now a bold and fierce critic. The man who defeated him- Victor Munyaka has taken up that role and is hardly seen in his constituency as he journeys all­over the country in the company of Kangundo MP Johnson Muthama to offer fierce defense for the VP. To­gether with Mwala MP Pastor Daniel Muoki, the three have taken up the roles pre­viously played by Mutiso, Kiema, Kilonzo, Maitha and Mwanzia- with the older MPs taking the back seat to watch.

Mutiso’s departure was accelerated by failure by the VP to keep his prom­ise to appoint him am­bassa­dor. Things were made worse by Mutiso’s decision to re­veal Kalonzo’s role in implicating Mr Mwau and Mr Ndambuki in the par­lia­men­tary report on the murder of the man he(Mutiso) succeeded in Kilome, Tony Wambua Ndilinge.

Kamba professionals, scholars and the movers of capital have not been spared either and have not been con­sulted ever since Kalonzo became a Big Man, giving them room to stock fires for the VP from wherever they are.

Personal Assistants have not been lucky either. It begun with Fred Muteti, followed by his events stew­ard Martin Mulwa. Then came Kioko Mulaki, his home based right hand man who chaired the Mwingi North CDF Committee and ill-fated Mwingi Cul­tural Festival and now Mr Mike Makau.

Informed sources say the latest fall out with the PAs is likely to get to the court as the aides feel that lies have been used to tarnish their names even as they have helped the VP make a name in the political stage.

At stake is the management of the Kalonzo Musyoka Foundation (KMF) where allegations are flying around that it is broke after funds were allegedly misappropriated in connection with the 2007 electioneering.

Those privy to the fall out say the VP has accused an MP who is one of his closest confidants with fiddling with KMF funds while his aides insist that the cash was used to breath life into Musyoka’s campaigns when finances dried up.

As we went to press, The Anchor learnt that one of the aides was pre­paring to take court action to safe­guard his integrity against a spir­ited assault to depict him as dishonest.

It is the latest development in the simmering post election wars between the ODM and the ODM-K that became public after the Vice-President dis­missed Muteti and Mulwa for allegedly spying for Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

Muteti was at the time serving as the Personal Assistant to the Minister for Nairobi Metropolitan Mr Mutula Kilonzo, where he landed after re­la­tionship with the VP went sour over campaign funds.

Muteti is the man ODM-K used to collect campaign funds from the PNU to help spirit Kalonzo’s campaigns in places PNU could not capture because of the fear that Raila would have cap­tured the places if Kalonzo re­treated due to dwindling finances.

It is alleged that the aides passed crucial information to Raila and Assis­tant Minister for Transport Mr John Harun Mwau, who works closely with Mr Odinga.

The spying game between the two camps has been going on for several months.

Sources say the National Security Intelligence Service(NSIS) operatives have found themselves embroiled in the murky politics between the two camps, ostensibly at personal level, yet using state resources to eavesdrop on private conversations involving MPs and other marked individuals in the Kalonzo staff list.

A source has it that virtually all Kamba MPs have their phones listened to, not for purposes of state security but to ensure that someone knows whom they talk to and what they talk about. “ It is surveillance that is driven by fear that everyone is drifting away”, the source added.

Accusing fingers are pointed at a former NSIS official who keeps a deep throat connection in the spy agency such that he can manage to use its tools to collect information that is sold to politicians

The result has been tape recorded conversations where rival camps can be heard discussing their strategies to out-do the other side.

Sources say one such conversation was between Muteti and the Prime Min­is­ter and the VP used just that to fire Muteti on the day ODM-K held a crisis meeting and resolved it will not join PNU.

Another recording has voices of two MPs and a former police officer now a political operative discussing the possi­bility of murder- yet the two camps have chosen to keep the dirty secret tapes under the carpet because the tapes raise key issues on the rule of law.

Mr Muteti and Mr Mulwa have since confirmed to the media the alleged spying claims but deny any wrong doing.

Kalinzoya’s dramatic resignation from Kangundo CDF

FRANCIS Kalinzoya has quit the Kangundo Constituency Development Fund Committee.

Kalinzoya quit on September 16 in a letter written to the CDF Chairman Professor Lelo and copied to Kangundo MP Johnson Muthama, Kangundo District Commissioner, the Chief Executive Officer of the CDF National Management Board (NMB), Eastern Provincial Planning Officer and the Kangundo CDF Manager.

There was no listed copy for Kangundo DDO or Machakos DDO- Mrs Muimi- who has been overseeing fund operations.

It is unclear why Kalinzoya, an uncle of Mr Muthama decided to dramatize his res­ig­nation by copying his letter far and wide. It is even unclear why he addressed the letter to Prof. Lelo, when he knew that Muthama, who is the Patron f Kangundo CDF, was the appointing authority and not the pro­fessor.

In the seven paragraph letter which was obtained from Parliament CDF links, it is difficult to pin point the exact reason for his resignation.

But one can glean from the letter, its ex­tremely foul grammar not­with­standing, that a great fear drove Mr Kalinzoya, a fabulously courageous man, into re­signing.

Kalinzoya says he quit because he does not want to be used to contravene the rules and provisions of the CDF Act in terms of project prioritization and procurement pro­ce­dures.

This implies that there has been an attempted or forced irregularity in project prioritization and procurement.

Listen to Kalinzoya: “It is unlawful for the CDF committee to approve public projects without involvement of stakeholders…” He then quotes the relevant sections of the CDF Act that relate to identification of projects to be undertaken.

One can glean from the letter that he is taking issues with the number of meetings that the CDF team holds. He then goes ahead and says that he has been bad-mouthed to imply that he is not a honest person and a man of integrity and tells the chairman that he knows that such alle­gations to be unfounded.

He speaks of witch hunting that has de­picted him as a person opposed to projects that Mr Muthama has been pro­posing, a pointer to the possibility that the point of conflict is likely to be projects that do not go through the prioritization process.

Kalinzoya says he received threats from Muthama’s ‘junior aide’ to the effect that there was a plot to finish him. “In this re­gard, I opt to pull out of your committee”, Kalinzoya said.

He says: “Finally, I tentatively inform you to caution your committee to adhere and desist from reporting CDF meetings through handsets. It is only the chairman who is supposed to do so. This mal­prac­tice shall turn to be a “kangaroo” mission”.( All grammatical deficiencies are entirely Kalinzoya)

From the foregoing paragraph, it appears some members of the CDF team have been place in the CDF meetings and that adverse decisions are made during these telephone con­ver­sations- all at the back of the chairman.

Kalinzoya pens-off by offering special thanks to Mr Muthama for having appointed him to serve in the team, wishes the committee well and even apologizes for any inconveniences he may have caused.

Inquiries by The Anchor reveal that Kalinzoya is protesting a decision to employ some 12 in­di­viduals in the CDF, which is well beyond the comprehension of the CDF Act.

It is said the individuals have been paid using the CDF Kitty and Kalinzoya has voiced opposition to their employment.

Unconfirmed reports say that the NMB has written to Kangundo CDF over the salaries paid to the individuals, one of them a local photographer, seeking to have them recovered and terminated.

Contacted, Kalinzoya declined to divulge details but confirmed that he had quit to save his image. Calls made to Mr Muthama for a comment were answered by aides and he did not return them as requested. So what jobs do these employees do to deserve to be paid by citizen’s taxes and who are they?

Read The Anchor in coming days!

Raw sewer is polluting river, MP claims

Machakos Town Mp Dr. Victor Munyaka is claiming that raw sewer is flowing into Mwania River.

Consequently, he is urging the Macha­kos municipal council to stop the pollution of Mwania River with raw effluence from the town’s sewerage system.

Dr Munyaka said that as a result of the raw effluence the water from the river which was used for livestock and do­mes­tic use by fami­lies downstream could cause an out­break of water borne diseases.

The Mp questioned the effi­cacy of the town sewage treatment plant saying they were not up to date and needed an overhaul.

He called on the council to ensure that road repairs and other public works that were being carried out in the town were not shoddy.

Noting that the sewage system in the town was ever burst with raw sewage flowing into the streets, Dr Munyaka urged the council to ensure the water drainage sys­tems under speci­fi­cations.

up the re-carpeting process of roads in the town.

In the past week, they have re-carpeted Sy­oki­mau Avenue although a bump de­vel­oped outside the KCB due to a shallow drainage.

Town Engineer Morris Aluanga has been over­seeing virtually every bit of the works to ensure that the council gets value for money to be paid.” Remember we have performance contracts that we have to meet in terms of quality of work that is to be undertaken”, he told our reporters.

Residents wait with eagerness to see the quality of work to be carried out due to appre­hension caused by sluggish repairs al­ready undertaken.

Rotarians distribute mosquito nets

Over 5000 expectant mothers and chil­dren below 5 years have benefited from free treated mosquito nets do­nated by the Rotary Club of Machakos and the Rotary club of Norway.

Presenting the nets at Katoloni chief’s office in Machakos town, the team leader Mrs. Lydiah Kimondo said that they were giving the nets to the less fortunate people in the area to help curb the spread of Malaria.

Mrs. Kimondo who was accom­pa­nied by Rotarians Mary Musyoka and Mrs. Dorcas Mbathi said children at the age of 5 years and below were vul­nerable to malaria and ad­vised the par­ents to make sure that their children slept in beds with treated nets.

She said that the Rotary Club of Macha­kos was providing water for the resi­dents by con­structing water dams and providing wa­ter tanks.

Mrs. Kimondo said that the work of the rotary club was to give to the needy selflessly appealing to other well wishers to donate to the less fortunate to help alle­viate their suffering.

Mrs. Musyoka advised the net re­cipi­ents to avoid washing the nets be­fore 6 months as this diluted the medicinal power of the nets.

The immediate Former President of Macha­kos rotary Club Mrs. Jennifer Mangu said the clubs were concerned with the spread of the disease among expectant mothers and children and would spear­head the campaign to prevent its spread.

Mrs. Mangu also led other Rotarians in distributing 500 nets to the residents of Mutituni location in Machakos district said their target was to distribute the nets to ex­pectant mothers and children under five years in a bid to control killer malaria.

Last year, the club donated 3000 mos­quito nets.

Teachers seek change

Knut leadership accused of negligence

TEACHERS in Machakos District are up in arms with the local leadership of the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT), citing eight grounds upon which they find no more trust in the union.

A memorandum being used as a cam­paign tool in the impending Knut by-elections, the teachers say that are receiving poor or no service from KNUT, Machakos Branch.

The elections are being held in the greater Machakos District to fill places left by offi­cials who have moved to newly formed Knut branches. Elections will be held in Kangundo, Yatta and Mwala to elect new branch lead­ership. In Machakos, elections will be held to fill in the vacant positions al­though teachers are de­manding that they pick new leaders al­to­gether, a matter that is proving tricky for Branch Executive Sec­re­tary Albanus Mutisya, the seemingly lone survivor in he branch.

Campainging under a plat­form of wilding a big broom(to sweep away Mutisya) the teachers accuse the branch of mis­man­aging teachers’ projects leading to their collapse and cited the Burial and Benevolent Fund(BBF) the Education Scheme, and Masaku Teachers Sacco now headed by General Manager Mr. S Kyelenzi. (See an insider description of how sacco was bled to be the shell it is today- yet Knut never raised a finger- in center pages)

The challenge is composed of Mu­tua Muthengi- seeking to be­come Branch Chairman, Cosmas Kieti- Vice Chairman, Nicho­las Musyoka- Vise Secretary, John Masila- Treasurer, Benedicta Kieti- Vice Trea­surer and Sarah Kitavi- Women Rep­re­sen­tative.

They allege that there is a wide lead­ership vacuum, lack of vision, direction hence no progress in the way teachers live

They complain that the schemes now cause over de­ductions of their salaries aimed at enriching some people thus de­sta­bi­lizing teacher’s pur­chasing power and mo­rale. They accuse the leaders of failing or delaying paying re­tired teachers re­funds to the Education Scheme and BBF, causing long and pe­rennial queues at the Knut office.

Lack of professional ethics in handling teachers’ issues and problems yet an­other alle­gation being raised, coupled with claims of neg­li­gence, dishonesty and in­com­pe­tence by those in office.

They claim to have been swindled of cash from the schemes and added that the BBF was one of the most shameful schemes were relatives of dead teachers can no longer rely on the scheme to burry their dead due to de­lays in disbursements.

In one such case, a teacher has gone to court to demand that the union be com­pelled to pay him his contributions to the BBF fater pulling out to avoid the frus­trations faced by other members.

They allege that teachers have been sub­jected to un­fair treatment by those in power and that the union has been de­sta­bi­lizing and threat­ening members with trans­fers and victimization of those with di­ver­gent views.

Efforts to obtain a comment from Mr Mutisya were un­successful as he was out of office for the last three weeks.

His cell-phone line- 0726636319-was out of reach each time our reporters tried to reach him.

Wanton charcoal burning wreaks havoc in Mwitika Division

Wanton destruction of trees for charcoal threaten parts of Mwitika division in Kitui dis­trict with desertification and its re­sultant effects in the next two years, a Forest Extension Officer in the area Mr. Karimi Maina has warned.

Speaking at Kyamatu Chief’s camp during a public sensitisation baraza on the Ag­ri­cul­tural and Livestock Extension programme (NALEP) project that begins its activities in Kyamatu lo­cation this fi­nan­cial year, Mr. Karimi said the location had wit­nessed heavy de­struction of trees owing to uncontrolled charcoal trade.

He said the wanton de­struction of the woodlands in the area would affect the ecosystem and bring about en­vi­ron­men­tal degradation whose effects could not be undone in hundreds of years.

He said there was a drop in honey pro­duction in the area due to the de­struction of the acacia woodlands which he said produced the highest quality honey that made Kitui district very reputable for quality honey pro­duction in Kenya.

The Forest officer said all persons making charcoal in the division must seek reg­is­tration with chiefs and assis­tant chiefs in order to control destruction of trees.

He also told the public to demand char­coal trade permit from all the char­coal traders who flock the area from Nairobi and other parts of the country in search of the commodity.

Charcoal from the area was believed to be high quality because it was made from hardwood that could not be readily found elsewhere.

During the meting the Mwitika Division NALEP co-coordinator Mr. B. Kitsao said the project would assist farmers by edu­cating them on modern methods of agriculture, livestock keeping, home eco­nomics and other development ac­tivities in order to boost food security and enhance poverty reduction.

Livestock production officer Mr. B.J. Kithome said out of the 27,000 cattle in Mwitika division only 6000 have been vacci­nated in previous years noting that there were too many animals that could not be served within the few crashes in the area.

He called for the construction of more crashes in the vast area in order to en­sure all cattle and other livestock were reached by vaccination exercises.

Members of the public appealed to the Government to provide water and famine relief in the area owing to a severe drought and famine that was ravaging the area.

Mayor tears into traffic police over corruption

TRAFFIC Police and matatu operators have introduced some organized corruption car­tel in Machakos.

Now an emissary collects Sh 100 from each of the matatu owners in the town and the money is delivered to traffic po­licemen as protection fee.

Those who do not contribute to the till are then reported as the delivery is made so that their lives are made difficult on the roads. These details emerged from Macha­kos Mayor Fidellis Kimuyu as he lambasted Traffic Police and Matatu op­erators whose cartels now threaten coun­cil revenue.

Councillor Kimuyu decried the rot at the Machakos traffic department and called on the police commissioner Hussein Ali to quickly act to end corruption in the de­partment.

Addressing matatu operators plying the Kathiani route who had withdrawn their vehicles from the Machakos-Kathiani road to protest over unfair business com­pe­tition by some private cars owners who had established an illegal stage where they did not pay council charges.

The operators are not even subjected to traffic police rules as their matatus do not have the yellow line, the speed governor and over load passengers with others sitting in the boots of the vehicles to un­der­line the levels of impunity.

Mayor Kimuyu blamed Public Service Ve­hicle (PSV) owners for abetting corruption in the department saying every day they collected Sh100 from each ve­hicle and send to the Traffic Police unit as pro­tection fee.

“The traffic police department is rotten with corruption. Even you matatu op­erators are corrupt because you con­trib­ute sh100 each day with which you send an emissary with to take to the police”. He said that whoever refused to give the money would face police wrath with their roadworthy vehicles being arrested for being unroadworthy and challenged the matatu operators to end the vice by re­fusing to give bribes.

Mayor Kimuyu threatened that political leaders in Machakos district may be forced to start a crackdown and clean up of the traffic department in the area where both the corrupt officers and PSV operators who give bribes would be arrested.

He said the traffic police depart ment was the bane of the police force noting that they had continued to damage the image of the police with their open corruption activities coun­try­wide.

The mayor instructed his officials to en­sure those operating the illegal stages were arrested and charged for con­tra­vening the council’s bye-laws and cautioned them stern punitive action would be taken against officials found colluding with the illegal operators.

Mbooni DC heads to Mbumbuni

MBOONI District Commissioner is headed to Mbumbuni.

He will be fulfilling a divisive vote taken two months ago during which delegates voted to es­tab­lish the new district head­quar­ters at Mbumbuni as other del­egates from Mbooni abstained from voting.

Mbooni delegates ab­stained after they saw the writings on the wall that they could not win the vote as delegates from Kisau and Kalawa, with others from Tulimani had made up their minds to vote for Mbumbuni.

The vote, presided over by out­going Mbooni DC Mr Tom Macheneri alias Ma­chin­ery and attended by Makueni DC James Mwaura saw 54 voting for Mbumbuni and 20 from Mbooni ab­staining. 18 votes from Tulimani were split and six others from Kako lo­cation that would have pro­vided the swing vote settled for Mbumbuni as well.

However leaders seemingly dis­re­garded the vote with Cabi­net Minister Mutula Kilonzo urging for a consensus in de­ciding the head­quar­ters of Mbooni District.

The latest twist of events comes with the trans­fer of Mr Macheneri from Mbooni to Samburu. In­formed sources told The An­chor that his successor- Mr Khisa had been in­structed to report to Mbumbuni and not Kikima where Macheneri was sta­tioned.

If this is the case, it puts Mr Kilonzo in a diffi­cult position as the matter appeared settled recently when he declared the vote a joke and that such a decision could not be taken by a vote even since Mbooni became a Sub District many years ago.

If indeed the DC goes to Mbumbuni, it shows that some reasonably powerful forces- more powerful than Mutula, are at work in Mbooni District and all eyes are facing in the di­rection of Chief of General Staff General Jeremiah Kianga and other non- talking operatives who hail from Kisau Location where Mbumbuni is head­quar­ters.

But if the decision would have been changed to any other place other than Mbumbuni, then the government would have had an ex­pla­nation to do as to why it caused the vote to be taken in the first place.

Ordinarily, the State has been respecting the people’s choice for a District Head­quar­ters and when a decision has been made in the form of a vote, any al­ter­ation would amount to an affront on democracy, a thing this gov­ernment seems unwilling to do at this point in time.

Nevertheless, the matter remains so di­vi­sive that many alliances and re­la­tionships are on the brink of collapse owing to the issue of the placement of the headquarters.

In an indication that the headquarters would not be at Mbumbuni, Mr Kilonzo told a gath­ering of public servants and resi­dents of Mbooni that the decision to site the head­quar­ters would be reached by con­sen­sus rather than a vote.

He told elders from Mbooni Division to set out and engage with elders from other four divisions of Mbooni District and agree on where to locate the headquarters.

He dismissed as nonsense a recent meeting held at Wote in Makueni District where a vote was allegedly taken to site the headquarters in Mbumbuni in Kisau Location and asked since when the issue of such decisions was ever left to voting.

He said Mbooni Division has remained a se­nior division since 1952. “Makueni and Kangundo were much smaller centers and decisions to site the headquarters were never subjected to a vote at any time in history. Why has it become necessary to do so about Mbooni? Mr Kilonzo, who is the Minister for Nairobi Metropolitan De­vel­opment asked.

He said no one shall ever remove the gov­ernment establishments from Mbooni as they were established to serve local citizens. “Let me be told who shall ever remove the hospital, the District Commissioner or other offices from Mbooni. Will you also uproot the police Station and Kikima City?” Mr Kilonzo thun­dered at the time.

Swedish partners wrap-up Machakos tour

A fact finding Swedish del­egation has con­cluded a fact finding mission to ex­plore ways in which Robertsfors Mu­nici­pality will assist in turning Machakos town to a sis­ter city in terms of sus­tainable de­vel­opment.

Outgoing Machakos Town Clerk Mr. Stephen Mbondo who has been taking the delegation around says the eco-mu­nici­pality concept hinges of a balance of environmental issues with other social, eco­nomic and po­litical de­vel­opment ac­tivities. Machakos is poised to become Africa’s first eco-municipality in the next six years if plans already underway bear fruit as envisaged.

This follows an agreement for co-op­eration between the Macha­kos Municipal council and the Mu­nici­pality of Robertsfors in Swe­den where the later, with the help of other do­nors will assist Macha­kos mu­nici­pal Council to turn itself into an eco-mu­nici­pality.

Speaking during a public sensitisation fo­rum on sus­tainable development, Mr Mbondo said key issues to be addressed would be declining resources like water provision, solid waste management, pollution control, afforestation, street lighting, human rights, edu­cation among other issues.

He said the Machakos mu­nici­pal council had already worked out a sustainable development action plan under which Roberstfors municipality that is renowned for its sus­tainable development among other donors would assist.

He said by 2012 a conference would be held in Machakos town that would involve all parts of the country to discuss eco-mu­nici­pality and sus­tainable de­vel­opment.

The Robertsfors-Machakos mu­nici­pality co-operation co-co­or­di­nator Ms Ira Sundberg said the eco-municipality con­cept was already in use in Japan

and European countries with the aim of strengthening sustainability of ecological, eco­nomic and social de­vel­opment.

She said the cooperation was a two way learning process that was beneficial to both Machakos and Robertsfors mu­nici­palities.

Probe at Masaku County winds up

THE probe team at the County Council of Masaku has completed its work and has presented their findings to the Ministry of Local Government.

Their conclusion brings to an end tension rocking County Hall as they summoned officer af­ter another in search of missing cash, be­lieved to be close to 100 million, which can not be accounted for over time.

Now the tension becomes endless anxi­ety as they await the axe to fall, ei­ther in dis­missals, pros­ecutions or sur­charge to help the coun­cil recover lost funds- if it ever will. The crucial lesson is that the County Council of Masaku is so rich that the heist not­with­standing, the council is still in solid financial standing.

The probe comes after the transfer of former County Clerk Pius Mutemi and the resistance by the council chairman Stanley Mangeli to let Mr Timothy Kamili take over as County Clerk. The gov­ernment sus­pects that the re­sis­tance to change may have been aimed at masking gross mis­man­agement of funds. The officers were interested in knowing how the council had spent its finances since 2005 to date.

They looked into the council’s cash books for other years before then and have sought to see the council’s asset register.

Those in the know say they have ques­tioned current and former officials over the sale of some of the council’s houses whose authority to sell can not be traced in the council’s Minute Book. Efforts to trace the where­abouts of the proceeds of the sale were unsuccessful and neither could it be ascertained how much was earned from the sale of the houses.

The Anchor was told that the in­ves­ti­gators also probed the siphoning of cash from council accounts through cheques that were said to have been forged. The coun­cil lost big amounts of cash by use of at least 11 cheques that the officials claim were fake-yet they were used to withdraw cash from the accounts at KCB Machakos Branch.

The auditors have summoned former chief officers of the council for “grilling” over various issues. The immediate former Clerk Mr. Pius Mutemi (Malindi),a former County Clerk Mr. Kimani and the Sotik County Council Clerk Pius Muia, formerly a Senior Administration Officer with the council testified. One desired testimony was that of the late County Clerk Mr Kaboi as much is said to have taken place un­der his watch.

In the sport light is the construction of Kivaa market bus park in Kivaa Ward rep­re­sented by the chairman which is said to have used Sh2.5m yet it does not seem to have used Sh200,000.More than Sh.1.5 meant for the bus park project can not be accounted for.

“What has been injected in the project is about Sh200, 000.00 raising concerns among area residents”, said this source who requested anonymity.

The other area of concern is water project in Masii that led to a dem­on­stration by the local community over a Sh1.5m wa­ter pump which cannot be traced. Masii is represented by Councillor Charles Musau, who is the chairman of the Finance Committee. He is serving his first term.

The auditors conducted a head-count to check allegations of “ghost” workers in the council, which did not yield a result.

The Anchor also established that the probe touched on a deal between the coun­cil and the Machakos Maendeleo Ya Wanawake where the latter were supposed to be paid thousands of shillings for planting trees. They were paid huge sums of money but the trees are no where to be seen.

The investigators also discovered that former councilors and officials went away with huge imprests, with one such official being owed Sh500,000. The An­chor will run the report as soon as it be­comes available.

Water prospects in Machakos get real

MACHAKOS has hit the road to­wards water suffi­ciency with the commissioning of works for the rehabilitation of Maruba Dam.

The minister for Water and Irri­gation Mrs. Charity Ngilu per­formed the ground breaking ceremony of a Sh 350 million Maruba dam re­ha­bili­tation project.

The Maruba dam project is among four others that the Gov­ernment is re­ha­bili­tating is five districts in arid and semi arid areas as model of how water storage in arid areas could quickly end famine and water problems in these areas.

Hundreds of Macha­kos Town resi­dents who came to witness the event, that could drastically change the fortunes of the 100-year plus town.

Mrs. Ngilu said provision of water was the key to economic development noting that water shortage was to blame for pov­erty and food in­se­cu­rity in the coun­try.

Mrs.Ngilu recalled how she was forced to close down a bakery and a hotel she had es­tab­lished in Machakos 15 years ago due what she said daily harassment by public health officers for lack of water.

She said due to lack of water in the town, many companies had relocated to other towns like Athi River and Nairobi and ex­pressed hope they would re­turn upon completion of the project that is scheduled within nine months.

She said the Government had earmarked to construct Umaa dam in Kitui district, Kiserian dam in Kajiado, Badasa dam in Marsabit district, and Chemsusu dam in Koibatek district.

She said Kenyans living in arid and semi arid areas should push their leaders and the Gov­ernment to seek solutions to water shortage instead of rushing to beg for famine relief food all round the year.

He challenged citizens and leaders in those areas to speak with one voice in demanding water noting that tapping of run-off water that was lost to oceans was the key to accessing water for citizens countrywide.

Mrs. Ngilu said her ministry was working on a sessional paper on water storage for domestic and other uses through con­struction of dams and other reservoirs.

The Permanent secretary in the ministry David Stower said the country was experiencing se­rious water problems in many parts noting that the Maruba dam project marked the beginning of a major development programme in water storage.

He said in order to stop the effects of drought, the ministry planned to build many dams countrywide that would serve as water reservoirs adding that shortage has hit Nairobi city where rationing has already started.

He said in a bid to stem the shortage in the city the minister would commission another wa­ter supply project to the city in Gatundu next week.

“This is the beginning of re­cov­ery programme in water storage so that 5 years from now we can look back and say we have enough water storage in the coun­try”, said the Permanent secretary.

He said in the last 15 years no new water storage structure has been constructed noting that the last was Moiben Dam in Eldoret.

Others who spoke included the Chairman of Tanathi Board Mr Geoffery Parsaoti, Chief Ex­ecutive officer of Tanathi Water Services Board Engineer J Nzesya and Machakos Mayor Fidellis Kimuyu.

Kitui DC warns over ranch

KITUI District Commissioner Joshua K.Chepchieng has warned that the people should not scramble for the B2 Yatta Ranching Cooperative Society Lim­ited land in the district. The DC said that that is a trustland and that it belongs to the Kitui County Council. The 53,000 acre land is in Kwa Vonza location, Yatta division.

The DC said: “The B2 Yatta land belongs to the Kitui County Council and people should not take into their hands. The people should not use jungle laws.” About 5,000 members of the B2 Yatta Ranching Co­op­erative So­ci­ety Limited are bitter over the invasion of the ranch by a group of squatters. And the DC warned that neither the ranchers nor the invaders can claim the own­ership of the land.

The DC was speaking to all the local District Officers, chiefs and their assistants during a meeting he had convened at the Kitui Multi-purpose De­vel­opment Training Institute. He was accom­pa­nied by his deputy, Mr. Fredrick Kitema and the District Administration Police Commander SP Abdullahi K.Adan.

The DC said that the conflict between Somali pastoralists and the Kamba commu­nity in Mwitika division of Kitui District over pas­tures and water is a long-term problem. “And we are looking for a long-term solution to the prob­lem,” Chepchieng added.

He further talked about the drug abuse, illicit brews and HIV/AIDS problems in the district. The DC said that he had signed a per­for­mance contract with the government on behalf of the local District Officers and chiefs. “We must implement all what is in our service charter. We must be effective. We must have a re­spon­si­bility in us as su­per­visors,” the DC told the ad­min­is­trators.

He announced that every chief must have two public rallies in his/her respective location in a month. The public is our em­ployer and he/she wants ser­vices. I expect you to be be­yond reproach. I want a com­pe­tent officer. I don’t want an officer who looks like a rained on person,” the DC told his jun­iors. He told them that he will be looking at the chief’s workplan once he visits the chief’s office.

The DC announced that SP Adan will next week tour all the Administration Police posts within the district to ensure their viabil­ity. He said that the police posts that require extra officers will be added more officers for the benefits of the public. Kitui District comprises of seven ad­min­is­trative divisions namely the Central, Matinyani, Mutitu, Mwitika, Yatta, Mutonguni and Kyuluni and it has a total of 43 administrative locations. The DC said that the provision of seeds to the citizens by the gov­ernment is part of poverty eradication

Kalawa residents protest over corrupt officer

Residents of Kalawa division in Mbooni district want a senior administration police officer in the area transferred for allegedly harassing them.

The residents who comprised traders at Kalawa market said the officer had made difficult their businesses for demanding bribes to allow them operate.

”He has even made it difficult for those supplying us with cereals from outside to trade in the area for arresting them after failing to give out bribes’’ said the residents.

They cited an incident at the market where the officer descended on a businesswoman’s cereals store where he demanded by force some huge bribe before she’s allowed to sell the maize to locals who are starving.

They said the officer had reached an unacceptable point that will no longer be tolerated and threatened to hold dem­on­strations to drive their point home.

”We cannot continue living in the past colonial life yet we have achieved our in­de­pen­dence’’ said an angry trader, Mutinda Kyome.

They at the same time appealed to the area district commissioner and the MP Mr Mutula Kilonzo to intervene.

Efforts to get comment from the officer were fruitless after he went underground when he realized he was being sought by the press for a comment.

The DC could not be reached for comment on his mobile phone but the MP promised to have the matter investigated and the right action to be taken.

EDITORIAL

Yes, Mrs Ngilu has shown leadership in Kitui Central

EARLY this Month, a remarkable event took place in Kitui District. Mrs Charity Kaluki Ngilu, arguably one of Kenya’s most extraordinary politicians hosted a fund raising event along the sidelines of the inaugural Kitui Cultural Festival.

The theme of the event was ‘Beyond Famine Relief’. Her thought line is that Kitui Central, just like other parts of Ukambani has relied for a long time on handouts given by the State in the form of Famine Relief- a reliance that has become an appalling addiction of the locals to the mu­nifi­cence of the State.

There is nothing imperfect with the State intervening to give food supplies when famine comes calling on its people. But is it not more strategic if interventions are instituted to en­sure that deprivation does not occur in the first place?.

This dependence syndrome has produced citizens, who are derided and dehumanized by their invented inabil­ity to stand alone and fend for themselves.

In the eyes of many, residents of this part of the world cannot survive unless the State unleashes food hand­outs during times of drought. These handouts have come with dishonor and locals have become the nation’s laughing stock because they appear incapable of feeding them­selves. Worse still, the State has exploited this situation to its advantage especially when deprivation comes in an election year.

Obviously, it is not true that these citizens can not stand alone. Yet it is true that manipulability of hungry people is phenomenal.

What is not available among them is enough rainfall-water if you want- to enable them grow food for them­selves. Even as their lands remain ravaged by harsh dry spells and scanty rainfall, these residents have as­ton­ishing buoyancy to cope with life in dry lands such that they only turn to famine relief as matter of a last resort.

Therefore Mrs. Ngilu’s theme of Beyond Famine Relief (Mwolyo) captures a vision where citizens can develop a frame­work of standing on their own- once they have been enabled to do so.

We are informed that she has shaped the Kitui Central De­vel­opment Association ( KICEDA) to help her pros­ecute this agenda of making Kitui Central residents discover how to go into the river and do the fishing on their own, rather than wait to be given the fish- as the State does today.

Ngilu’s game plan to enable her people engage in ways that are productive- engagements that bring real and quicker re­sult to the way they live. She has undertaken a survey to map out families in dire need and has al­ready set out to equip the families with means of production so that they can first meet basic family obligations as they embark in the bigger war to fend off poverty among themselves.

Towards this end, some Sh.15 million was raised. Ngilu is purchasing locally improved dairy goats and chicken and get been hives for the locals to engage in pro­duction of these varieties and honey. She has found seeds suited for dry land farming which she is in the process of dis­trib­uting after re­aliz­ing that traditionally cultivated crops-maize and beans have no place in local ag­ri­cul­ture.

She also plans to use resources available within CDF and other sources to find adequate water for drinking and irri­gation.

We wish to register our recognition that Mrs Ngilu has taken the first practical step ever taken by the political class to make a stab at the monster called poverty that ravages out land with calamitous outcomes. One can see that Mrs. Ngilu has provided leadership that is fright­eningly absent from the agenda of our leaders.

Whether she succeeds or not is, certainly, a different matter altogether. But we must emphasize that this in­ter­vention from Kitui Central is a clear indication that our leaders can do something momentous at their local levels to stem the ignominy that famine relief has brought among our people.

For it is not sufficient or even smart anymore for our leaders to mount the podium and supplicate for famine relief with­out making efforts to ensure food crisis is summarily blocked from wreaking havoc on our land.

Even as this was taking place, some politicians from the region were shouting themselves hoarse as they cast their myopic vision towards 2012, yet the authority of hun­ger is imprisoning millions of our people.

This is the time we need to shift our paradigm; to­morrow will be too late!

OPINION

How to regain dignity beyond the shame of fam­ine relief

For the fourth time running since 1992 the people of Kitui Central Constituency have re­soundingly re­newed my mandate as their rep­re­sen­tative in Parliament and I feel most humbled by this single most important honor which has been bestowed on me. I see these successive re-elections are a tes­tament of their faith and trust in me and my abilities to in­fluence and guide in a positive way the socio-economic and po­litical di­rection of their con­stituency.

Past Challenges:

Joining politics in 1992 on an oppo­sition ticket in a KANU die­hard zone was a most daunting task. Opposition poli­tics were perceived to have no play in Kenya and those who subscribed to them were to be shunned or out rightly con­demned. That was the order of the day. At a personal level, my most immediate and im­por­tant challenge was how to address the depressing poverty levels that faced the people of Kitui Central Constituency then, and that still persist to date.

The problems faced by my con­stitu­ents were many and daunting. Poverty was rampant, fam­ine was chronic, schools were inadequate, un­em­ployment was pervasive and water shortage was endemic. Women and the girl child who are traditionally tasked to fetch water traveled in­or­di­nately long dis­tances in search of water. The existing health facilities were few and far between and the general welfare of the constituents was ex­tremely appalling.

Roads were in desperate need of repair, and the general in­fra­struc­ture in the con­stituency was in shambles. A situation of despair, and hopelessness ex­isted which threatened the very foundations of our society.

Achievements

It is against this background the people of Kitui Central Con­stituency had found the ur­gent need for change in the governance of their affairs. This was the ultimate pro­pelling force that thrust me into active com­petitive politics.

Sine then together with you all, we have made great strides in our match forward, and today, I can look back with pride on what we have achieved with the limited re­sources we have at our dis­posal.

During my five years stint as a Cabi­net Minister in charge of Health, I became more aware of the high levels of morbidity and mortality experienced by our people in this country. Many of these illnesses and deaths can, however, be sig­nifi­cantly re­duced with im­proved access to water, sanitation and health care facilities.

To mitigate these, I did, as Min­is­ter for Health, mobilize re­sources to develop a dis­pen­sary in each of the sub-lo­cations in this constituency. I also did upgrade the entire medical infrastructure at Kitui District Gen­eral Hospital. Today the District Hospital can boast of a modern the­atre and well trained staff.

We had no tertiary or higher edu­cation institution, but we now have a college of the Kenya Medical Training College and a Kenyatta Uni­ver­sity College Cam­pus has re­cently been opened. To­gether we have built many more pri­mary schools, mixed day sec­ondary schools and youth poly­tech­nics.

Way back in 1992, when gov­ernment ini­tiated de­vel­opment had stalled due to freezing of do­nor funds arising from bad lead­ership, I did con­ceived the idea of starting Kitui Central De­vel­opment Asso­ciation (KICEDA) – a NGO to assist my constituents in mo­bi­lizing resources for de­vel­opment. Today KICEDA is a major vehicle and instrument for bringing about change and de­vel­opment in Kitui Central Con­stituency.

KICEDA is now involved in a range of activities including: HIV/AIDS, health, water and sani­tation, ag­ri­cul­ture, live­stock, en­vi­ron­men­tal conservation and now – the pres­er­vation of our cultural heri­tage.

Recently, KICEDA conducted a com­pre­hen­sive household sur­vey to establish the un­der­lying causes of poverty in this con­stituency. This followed a realization that my con­stitu­ents perennially rely on fam­ine-relief food – “mwolyo” to mitigate hun­ger. This growing shameful culture of dependency – of re­lying on food handouts has seriously undermined our dig­nity, self-esteem and to some degree credibility. We have to wriggle our­selves out of this trap so that we can become a self-re­liant and self-sustaining commu­nity in food supply. This will however, come about if our people have access to enough water.

Our aim is in the long run, to make our area a food basket – capable of feeding ourselves and providing surplus to other. If countries re­ceiving lesser rain­fall have made it, why not us? We are committed to a dignified life beyond famine relief.

Our studies demonstrate that lack of water is the bane of all the prob­lems in Kitui Central Con­stituency. With improved access to water, we can reduce in­ci­dences of diseases; boost agricultural and livestock production; guarantee ourselves food security; diversify our livelihoods, and ensure sus­tained incomes. The de­vel­opment of water in­fra­struc­ture will therefore be our priority in the days to come so that we can fun­da­men­tally transform the live­lihoods of our people.

The Kitui District Cultural Festival has been organized by KICEDA, and the focus of this event is on raising funds, thrift and entertainment.

Appeal

Our appeal is to all our friends to assist us in raising funds to meeting the challenges of pro­viding water to our people and address other problems in our commu­nity. What we seek to assure those who support us is that, all funds realized will be utilized pru­dently to meet the objectives of the Constituency Development Plan (2008 – 2012), which we will be shortly launching.

We hope the idea of food ‘hand out’ will sooner than late become a thing of the past, not just in Kitui Central but over our land as a whole. I hope you will all join me in striving to realize our dream of a hunger free constituency.

Mrs. Kaluki Ngilu is the MP for Kitui Central and Minister for Water and Irrigation.

Robbed of self-esteem

Disease and famine wreak havoc to Mwingi family

The image of young woman seated at the entrance of a rented house with two ba­bies suckling at a go gives an im­pression that they must have been twins. But one must be forgiven for making such a conclusion. Drawing nearer, a different pic­ture emerges, a true pic­ture of a dying child in the hands of a helpless mother.

It was hard to tell their age difference but one thing stood for sure that the two, Daniel and Stephen had an age gap of one year, not twins.

This is a sad story of Daniel, a one and half year old com­peting for the mammary resource with his four months old brother Stephen. He is se­verely malnourished and his mother Ms Tabitha Musya cannot afford to feed her six siblings and so opted to breastfeed him along side Stephen to save his life.

Daniel’s eyes ob­trude from a de­pressed sockets and his stunted body size as small as that of his brother Stephen. His looks provoke tears, a boy whose fate only God knows.

Daniel family is full of problems, having no place to call home not forgetting the ravaging famine that poses a threat to the whole country. His mother Tabitha Musya

has known no peace since her hus­band David Musya kicked her out of their home at Kyulungwa village in Mwingi central di­vision four months ago.

“When my husband expelled me I thought of my mother Kyambi Musyimi at Kyuso but her reception was not welcoming ei­ther. She openly told me to pack and go because she could not support all of us given the fact that she was a widower with four children at Kyuso Primary school and so I left,” she said.

Tabitha found herself in Mwingi town wan­dering from one place to another with­out a definite destination. An idea crossed her mind to first seek medical attention for her son Daniel who was in a very bad shape.

For the 25 year old mother, Mwingi dis­trict hospital children ward became her tem­po­ral home while nursing Daniel. Hounded by poverty and disease, the other five children were looped in. Mbithe- 6 years old, twins Makau and Kathini- 4, Mary- 2 and the last born Stephen also found themselves ‘ad­mitted’ in the same ward as their brother Daniel because their father Musya was not willing to share their misery.

Mrs. Jacinta Mwinzi, the district children officer sought to have Musya, a Miraa ven­dor in the town forced to care for his family but her efforts were futile. “The man excused himself to fetch his parents to go for his family at the hospital but ran away. We learnt later that he went his own way.” She said

Daniel was discharged in July after spending two months in the hospital. As usual the family was faced with a challenge of finding a place and food too eat. An unfinished la­trine in one of the residential plots in the town be­came their home for a couple of days until the care taker sym­pa­thized and offered them a room for free.

The family’s touching story spread like bush fire in the vi­cinity and when The An­chor visited them, they had not taken any meal since sun­rise and Daniel’s healthy had de­te­rio­rated. His lying on the sack was a dis­turbing pic­ture and his frail cry was an alert that a life was at stake.

Ironically the district Nu­tri­tionist, Mrs. Lydia Mbeti Kieti, pro­vided Tabitha with a car­ton of condoms, six mos­quito nets and ini­tiated her to the family planning Programme as she left the hospital. The fact that Daniel needed nu­tritious food to carry home more than his mother re­quired condoms was over­looked. Therefore the nurse’s effort to reinstate Daniel’s health failed to ma­te­ri­alize. He was back to the hos­pi­tal after a month but gravely ill than before.

Thanks to the God sent Mwingi District commissioner, Mr. Peter Kinuthia for sending a special delegation to deliver relief food to the family. Mr. Gideon Sirai , D.O 1 accompanied by Mwingi Central Di­vision Officer, Ms Julie Moraa, district Nutritionist, Mrs. Lydia Mbeti Kieti and the Mwingi location Chief, Mr. Makau Musyoka were sent by the Dc to deliver a sack of maize, 2 gallons of oil, undisclosed amount of beans and nutritious meal to the family.

Daniel was given a new lease of life when Mr. Sirai and Ms Moraa ordered for his re­ad­mission following his sorry health. As usual the five children were back to the hospital, a place meant for the sick. When they shall be out, remains a concern to everybody because Mbithe and the twins Makau and Kathini might not see the wall of a class this year if efforts are not done to force his father to perform his family obligation.

Munyaka shares out Sh650,000 to 13 youth groups

THIRTEEN youth groups in Machakos Town have benefited from Sh. 650,000 from the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF)

Even then, local MP Victor Munyaka wants the state to increase the kitty from Sh. 2 billion owing to the vast population of unemployed youth in the country.

Dr. Munyaka said with an annual bud­get of Sh.759 billion annually, the Sh.2 billion was too low and could not match the demands by the youth countrywide.

The MP who presided over the dis­bursement of Sh.650,000 from the Constituency Youth Enterprise Fund to 13 youth groups in the area asked the Government to streamline the bu­reau­cracy in disbursement of the fund to ensure easy access by the youth.

The MP said youth talents should be nurtured because Kenyan youth had demonstrated that sports was an quick avenue for making millionaires among young people and cited Pamela Chelimo and Dennis Oliech who have excelled in athletics and soccer respectively.

He promised the youth in his con­stituency that if the Government ini­tiated sports fund was channeled through the CDF, he would ensure that it was used to promote sports in the area. He asked the government to insure the YEDF to guard the fund against de­faulters.

Leaders in Macha­kos have been urging the youth to come forward and borrow from the fund as they have been un­willing to do so.

Consequently, civic leaders from the Machakos municipal council are appealing to the youth to stop shunning the Youth En­ter­prise Development fund and go for the loans offered by the Gov­ernment through the ministry of Youth and sports and financial in­sti­tutions.

The civic leaders said many youths in the district had shied away from the loans.Councillor Oliver Nzeki who is also the council’s finance committee Chairman said youths in his Mua ward had not ben­efited from the fund be­cause they did not know how to write proposals and prom­ised to assist them learn the skill in order to reap maximum benefit from the Government loans.

The councillors said the fund had helped many youths in other parts of the country and challenged them to explore and ex­ploit diverse business oppor­tu­nities in a bid to create em­ployment and reduce poverty.

The Machakos District Maendeleo ya Wanawake chairman Mrs. Mary Mbiu challenged the youth who were married to exploit opportunities arising from the fund and stop considering themselves as excluded from the fund.

He said in parts of Masinga con­stituency youths who were married had told her they would not apply for the loans as they did not consider themselves as youth simply because they were married.She said married women had double advantage because they could benefit from the Youth Enterprise Fund as well as the Women Fund in their respective districts.

MPs want search for political power halted in Ukambani

Three Ukambani Mps are seeking a para­digm shift in local politics from their search for power in 2012 and con­cen­trate on the crippling poverty in the region.

The Mps led by the Water and Irri­gation minister Mrs. Charity Ngilu said that top of the agenda in the region was pro­vision of water and not political ambitions.

The Mps Assistant Minister for Youth and sports Mrs. Wavinya Ndeti, Kitui West MP Charles Nyamai and Mrs. Ngilu were speaking at the Kitui stadium during a fund raiser or­ga­nized by Kitui Central De­vel­opment Association.

The fund raiser was aimed at sourcing funds to meet the challenges of pro­viding water and address other development prob­lems in the area.

“For many years long serving poli­ticians have been talking about what they want to be instead of what their people want to be. It is time leaders focused on de­liv­ery of service and help their people shake off pov­erty” said Mrs. Ngilu.

She asked voters in the region to vote out any of their leaders who failed to deliver development prom­ises.

Ndeti said that high poverty levels char­ac­terized by famine had pushed young girls in the region to the indignity of commercial sex in order to get food for their families.

She said the community would not be taken for granted noting that anyone in­ter­ested in political seats in 2012 should first deliver de­vel­opment to the region.

“We women Mps of Ukambani want to ini­tiate development for our people but have no interest in empty politics of power. But by 2012 nobody should ex­pect support from the community if they would not have addressed its problems”.

Kitui West Mp Mr. Charles Nyamai said mps should demonstrate their lead­ership by serving the pressing needs of the people.

He said Ukambani region required a mar­shal plan to get out of its poverty and challenged the Government to set aside billions of shillings to the ministry of North­ern Kenya and Arid Lands as a sign of commitment to ending high level pov­erty in those zones.

He asked the Government to review the water reforms to ensure that poor people could access water free of charge just as it was with medical care in public hos­pi­tals.

The event was also addressed by Tourism Assistant minister Cecily Mbarire, Wajir North Mp Mr. Mohammed Gabow and Kiambaa Mp Stanley Githunguri.

The official insider account of how Sacco was looted

Overseer exposes big scramble for cash, names companies that pocketed millions and demands action on Ngomo’s team

The following is an un­flattering speech made by Mr. EDRICK NGUNZI. Chairman, of the Su­per­vi­sory Committee to Masaku Teachers Saccco delegates at a meeting where the press was de­lib­er­ately not invited. It is now fash­ionable for sacco leaders to ex­clude the press from their meetings ‘to let the Sacco die in peace’, even when what they do is clearly a matter of public in­terest. It is a telling account of how the most promising business entity in Machakos was looted. There are names of those the sacco over­seers believe are culpable. Now The Anchor presents it all ver­ba­tim.

“Once again the Supervisory committee welcomes this pleasant occasion and fees privileged to present to the general membership through the delegates a report on the operations of the Sacco for the year 2007.

This year 2007 will, in the Supervisory committee’s view, go down as one which saw the Sacco almost collapse. The general decline in the Sacco’s loaning performance forced most of our members to seek loans from commer­cial banks and other financial in­sti­tutions to cushion them­selves from the harsh and hostile economic hardships facing almost everybody in Kenya today. Other opted to withdraw their membership. Faced with the un­re­lenting demand for money, the Management under the then General Manager sought external funding but unfortunately much of the money ended up in the unintended purpose as I shall report elsewhere in my re­port. I’ m therefore calling upon your patience so that I report com­pre­hen­sively on the following cru­cial areas of concern.

1. MEMBERSHIP

The tough economic conditions that faced the society in the year 2007 saw the greatest decline in membership ever witnessed since the Sacco was started over 40 years ago. The mem­bership stood at over 11000 be­fore the society lost control, making it one of the giant teachers Saccos in the country but as I report to you now, we lost 2048 members through vol­un­tary withdrawals, retirement or natural attrition. This represents an 18.6% decline.

There are signs of a light growth this year following renewed member con­fi­dence in the current man­agement committee but all efforts should be made to bring back the members who are currently being held hostage by banks.

We are also at the same time appealing to you delegates to encourage the newly employed teachers across the Districts to register with the Society. Their enrolment with us will however to a greater extend be determined by our performance, now and in future. It is therefore a task we are placing on the management to reclaim and retain the society’s lost glory.

2. LOANS/LOANING POLICY

The most crucial and critical service a Sacco offers to its members is the pro­vision of loans. This is an area that the society completely failed in. The last loans were provided in the month of March last year and the rest of the year passed without loans.

The loaning policy of first come first served was also grossly violated and loans were only available to a section of membership who were perceived to be loyal to the system. In some cases, free loans and advances were awarded to these members and some ended up receiving hundred of thousands of shillings. This basically means the 3 times a members’ share contribution policy pegged to loaning was also omitted. As I report to you a group of politically correct individuals, mostly from central and Kangundo electoral areas, are in record to have received instant advances to a tune of a million shillings plus each. The amounts are irrecoverable by check-off but I’m pleased to report that the CMC has hired a lawyer to pursue the cases. Let’s hope we’ll see quick action to­wards the recovery.

Fellow delegates, we should all be vigi­lant and watchful over the loaning procedures. Any violation should be reported immediately to make sure members are served equally. We have no sacred cows in the Society.

3. COMPUTERIZATION

It is now exactly a decade since com­put­er­ization was first introduced in our society. The aim was to com­put­erize both Bosa and Fosa. We were promised then, that we would be able to obtain members loan details at the click of a button at the reception office come 1st March 1999. The dream has never been realized.

I would however find it worthwhile to report that the collapse of the society emanated from this so called com­put­er­ization. Millions of shillings, in fact over 20m has up to now been used to do what could have cost approxi­mately 6 million then. The pro­cess, it is a pity, has not been com­pleted despite the huge ex­pen­di­ture except in the Fosa, where a system, full of all sorts of loopholes was installed, again exposing the so­ci­ety to fraud. Here our computer staff found easy prey and deprived the society of up to 50m. They have since been laid off and arraigned before court.

Efforts to link Bosa and Fosa, it is un­der­stood, are underway, after the completion of an evaluation by a com­puter expert on the current sys­tem. We are advising the management to source for a better system, if after the evaluation the current one is found to lack the required controls.

The computerization process should then either be completed or stopped altogether.

4. FOSA

For a quite sometime, the supervisory committee has been carefully looking into the operations of the FOSA. We have been keenly studying the op­erations of the main office as well as those of the six branches held at Kibwezi, Matuu, Emali, Wote, Kangundo and Kikima office.

The main office has been making a profit from its monthly activities but the branches, during the year under re­view recorded huge losses thus eating into the surplus netted at the head office.

The losses were incurred due to hefty allowances provided for staff, and se­cu­rity and the Callkey line monthly fee.

It is however, worth noting that al­though the current CMC has greatly slashed the expenditure on mobiles besides discontinuing the Callkey line the branches have continued to make no surplus expect Kibwezi that has re­corded a negligible surplus.

The branches should be evaluated with a view of closing down those that are perceived to be a burden to the so­ci­ety. Remember we are in business and not out to please members. The same members eagerly await dividends at the end of every trading period and there­fore no loss making venture should be continued.

5. NEGATIVE ACCOUNTS

History often repeats itself. In the books of history a scramble for the riches of Africa by European nations was wit­nessed in the 18th century.

A similar situation was witnessed at our society when the then General Man­ager introduced manual withdrawals. Sacco staff, permanent and casuals as well as attachees made frantic attempts to sweet talk the Manager to allow them withdraw from empty accounts thus creating negatives. The teachers also discovered this easy way to riches and joined the scramble. Non teachers also got wind of this ‘gold mine’ and rushed in for gold. Well connected committee members, those loyal to the systems also jumped into the band­wagon and like the rest pocketed what was allowed to them.

At the end of the scramble, the society lost over 66M. The amounts are in record and efforts by the current committee to recover the looted cash are underway albeit slowly. No single coin should remain unpaid. We urge the CMC to deal with the looters with­out mercy.

6. THE PLAZA

This housing project that was un­der­taken by the Sacco and a section of our members now houses our offices. The society contributed 25% while the members did the rest 75%. The Management of the Plaza for some­times remained with Sacco until members appointed an independent board to run its affairs. The Sacco has two members representing it at the board.

It is therefore questionable why society’s employees are working for the Plaza when the two are separate en­tities in all aspects. As a tenant to the In­vestment, the Sacco should plainly pay its landlord and the two should never share anything. Efforts to have the two divorced are not bearing fruit. We are therefore requesting for an or­der from delegates to have the two operate separately.

THE 2006/2007 PROCUREMENT

RE­PORT

During the period under review, the Society witnessed yet another scramble but this time from suppliers. These, during a scrutiny into the then coveted payment vouchers are categorized into minor and major suppliers.

An in-depth search also unearthed a yet third category that had its payment vouchers stacked not in a file but in a special envelop.

This group was categorized as ‘special suppliers.’

Let me briefly report the main suppliers in 2006 and 2007 separately.

IN 2006 – 2007

Name of Supplier Items/service supplied Amount

1. Travelwide Computer software 17,483,232.80

2. Scud distributors Office equipment 13,240,133.80

3. Brookhaven Stationery 9,456,000.00

4. Kamploop Agencies Fosa strip cards, banking software,

Fosa credit cards 8,635,000.00

5. Hardsoft system Computer networking, air conditioners 5,421,000.00

6. Mesco consultants Strategic plan, Fosa debit cards 2,010,965.50

7. Talkcom mobile services Delegates/staff mobile phones 987,394.00

8. Callkey E.A Ltd. Internet installation, Vsat Installation 2,246,844.90

9. None Varied 9,910,155.00

NOTE

l In July 2006, Scud dis­tributors was contracted to supply cal­cu­lators worth 980,000/=.

l On February 24th Kamploop Agencies was paid at once Kshs. 1.7M for supplying soft­ware on magnetic strip cards for Fosa.

l In May 2006, Hardsoft was paid Kshs. 250,000/= for supplying office air conditioners.

l In 2006, Mesco consultants was contracted to put up suggestion boxes at Kshs. 200,000/=.

l Talkcom was during the year in question contracted to supply mobile phones for delegates to be repaid through check off system. On 23rd August 2006, Talkcom supplied mobile phones for staff valued at Kshs. 142,400. However no record of the beneficiaries could be traced meaning no recoveries have been or are being made.

IN 2007

SUPPLIER AMOUNT

1. Computer castles 6,720,000.00

2. Travel Wide 5,824,983.50

3. Scud distributors 5,484,850.00

4. Jawchan 2,793,230.00

5. Kamploop agencies 2,375,000.00

6. Hardsoft 2,070,000.00

7. Callkey E.A. Ltd. 1,267,845.00

8. Mesco 953,000.00

9. Brookhaven 932,000.00

10. Chakim pride 607,500.00

11. Talkcom 250,000.00

NOTE

Other minor suppliers, namely: Chip Electrical, Asentric Consultants Ltd., Akamba fire protective, Shekima Tents, Synchrosoft Kenya, Uneek cleaning ser­vices, Katiba Ltd., to name just but a few were also in constant business with the society over the two year pe­riod under review. They drew millions of shillings from the teachers’ organization.

DIVIDENDS

From the analysis above, it is now al­most evident that the top brass con­cerned itself with suppliers, where in most cases supplies were only done in paper without delivery of the goods thus translating to massive losses. In my own view very little or no surplus was realized. The audited books of accounts will tell. However, let the committee pay what was realized if any.

THE FORMER EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

The Sacco is ailing and moribund due the greed that was shown by Mr. Solomon Ngomo, former General Man­ager, Mr. Cosmas Mwololo, retired Chairman, Paul Ilii, former Treasurer, Mr. Nicholas Mutunga, former Hon. Secretary, and Mr. Livinac Muia, re­tired Vice Chairman. They, in collaboration with suppliers looted the society coffers dry. A lot has up to now been un­earthed and the CMC should ur­gently make arrangements to have them face the law. Let no stone remain unturned.

CONCLUSION

1. The period under review was the most difficult one due to cash constraints and the su­per­vi­sory committee wishes to register profuse grati­tude to those of our mem­bers who firmly held on to their seats when the vessel was facing eminent collapse.

2. The supervisory wishes to thank the delegates for their continued support even during those trying moments.

3. The Ministry of Co-operatives shall not be forgotten for the advisory role they played to have the Sacco back on its feet.

4. Lastly to all our membership and to those who in one way or another had an input into finding solution to our prob­lems.”

EDRICK NGUNZI

CHAIRMAN

SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE

17 unidentified bodies burried

THE Kitui Municipal Council has buried a total of 17 unclaimed bodies from the Kitui District Hospital mor­tuary. According to the acting Kitui District Medical Officer of Health, Dr Leonard Oduor Okoko , the corpses had been lying at the mortuary since May this year. Dr Okoko , who was talking to journalists in his office, said that the 17 were nine men, six women and two children. The deceased were buried in a mass grave at the Kitui town’s public cem­etery. Okoko said that the longest period for a corpse to stay at the gov­ernment hospital mortuary is six months.

He added that some of the buried were suspected criminals that had been burned beyond rec­og­nition by members of the public. The medic said that the unclaimed body should be disposed off from the mor­tuary within ten days after a law court order to bury the same. “We bury the unclaimed bodies through collaboration with other authorities including the police,” the doctor said.

Extra councillors sworn to serve Kitui Councils

OFFICIAL chauvinism will see Local Authorities in Kitui District pay more councilors than the law allows.Kitui Municipality will have two more nominees and Kitui County will have one more.

The three ODM-Kenya coun­cil­ors in Kitui District were officially sworn in following a court order.

Councillors Henry Billy Mwendwa and Mrs Mwiyathi Mutia of the Kitui Municipal Council were sworn in at the Town Hall by the Deputy Town Clerk, Mr Francis Alaar.

The Kitui Municipal Council now has a total of 14 coun­cillors. The 14 councillors including the Mayor Patrick Makasi Muindi attended the ceremony.

And Councillor Joseph Kalenga of the Kitui County Council was sworn in by the County Clerk , Mr George Wambua, at the cer­emony held at the County Council Hall.

All the 39 Kitui County Council’s civic leaders who are twenty-nine elected and ten nominees attended the function.

The three civic leaders were sworn in under the High Court’s order. They were nominated as councilors vide Gazette Notice Number 1276 dated February 22, 2008 but t were later degazetted by the then Local Government Minister Uhuru Kenyatta.

He claimed to be exercising powers conferred to him by section 27 (2) and 40 (1) of the Local Government Act (Cap.265), yet it is widely believed that he did it at the bidding of Vice Presi­dent Kalonzo Musyoka, whose meddling with nominated councilors list has triggered a fall-out he may never over­come.

Informed sources tell The An­chor that the list of nominees from Ukambani as presented through ODM-K Mutula Kilonzo was never the same again after it was tem­pered with at Mr Kenyatta’s office by Mr Musyoka, Machakos Town MP Victor Munyaka and Kangundo MP Johnson Muthama on one Sunday evening, triggering a rebellion in the party that Mr Musyoka does not seem to have a way of stemming.

Several MPs- Wavinya Ndeti, Kiema Kilonzo and Charles Kilonzo protested, saying that names they had presented had been altered, going against an agreement that they had made in the party.

Mutula has never commented on the changes but is believed to be unhappy that some leaders sought to alter a list he had pains­takingly put together as party secretary general and for­warded to the Uhuru with the approval of the VP

The Kitui County Clerk said that it is the minister to decide which nominated councilor will be degazetted. “We have no powers to degazette any councilor. The powers to gazette or degazette a councillor lie with the minister,” Wambua said as he swore in Councillor Kalenga.

He said that the large number of councillors is a burden to the tax-payers in the country.

Mavoko council fights on

MAVOKO Municipal Council is pushing on with closures of businesses and demolition of houses to comply with pro­visions of Local Gov­ernment Act and Public Health in Mlolongo area and the municipality at large.

Town Clerk Wisdom Mwamburi told The Anchor that sanity would have to be returned to Mavoko so that the municipality would grow within the limits and guide­lines of existing stat­utes. This comes as residents con­tin­ued to raise complaints about notices the council had given to traders in Mlolongo to pull their buildings down and con­struct water disposal sys­tems on their buildings.

In Mlolongo, sewer dis­charges on to the main tarmac road as some buildings block its passage, while some buildings do not have arrangements to dis­pose of such waste.

Residents, rather than address the problems have resorted to protests and demands that changes be made at Town Hall. The municipality is one of the badly planned municipalities in Kenya- its proximity to the City of Nairobi not­with­standing. The Ministry of Local Government has sec­onded a senior City Planner to the municipality to in­tro­duce order, a de­vel­opment that is causing panic among those who ben­efited from a lawless situation in the past. What is worrying in Mavoko is that the Civic Wing, led my Mayor Mwikali has been opposing the move by the ad­min­is­trative wing to rein in disorder in populist pos­turing.

Elsewhere, Mr Mwamburi has sworn in Mr Abaroba Godana as the third ODM-K nominated coun­cilor, with Mavoko mu­nici­pality joining in the ranks with councils with more coun­cil­ors than is legally allowed- thanks to confusing politics at ODM-K.

The Town Clerk swore in the coun­cilor to comply with a High Court order reinstating him back to the council as a councillor. Mr Godana’s nomi­nation was re­voked by the ODM-K party in March this year and his name replaced with that of Ms Cecilia Mbinya Celeti. Celeti remains a coun­cilor in the same council with one nomination slot being filled by two individuals. It is unlikely that the party will move to re­voke the nomination of Celeti since there is no loud com­plaint about the two being in the council. What is how­ever at issue is that it is the tax payer in Mavoko who will feel the pinch in paying for the upkeep of a councilor who should not have been nomi­nated in the first place.

Given the culture of reward ex­isting in all parties, ODM-K, like many other parties may well be pleased to let Mavoko taxpayers carry the burden of its mistakes- as long as it is not the party that bears the brunt of it all.

Hundreds of Mr Godana’s supporters and those of Cllr. Cecelia had arrived at the Town hall as early to witness the un­folding events as se­cu­rity officers kept watch from a dis­tance.

Mr Godana’s swearing in brings to the ten the number of civic leaders in the council which is dominated by ODM-K with four elected councillors while Sisi kwa sisi, The Independent Party (TIP) and ODM party have one elected councillor each respectively.

Just how will the metropolis will find Machakos mu­nici­pality?

Just how real is this thing called Nairobi Metropolitan De­vel­opment? That question emerged as central to Macha­kos residents when a group led by Mutula Kilonzo came calling at Town Hall.

Rather than be told what NMD is, leaders resorted to singing dirges about water- old tunes that were still being sung in Machakos some 20 years ago. Thus a reporter summed up the meeting in thus intro:

“A cross section of leaders in Ukambani wants the Gov­ernment to permanently fix the perennial water problem in the region as it gears to join the Nairobi me­tropo­lis”. Then the story ran: “Speaking in Macha­kos during a public consultative meeting organised by the ministry, the leaders among them mps, may­ors and civic leaders said that owing to its closeness to Nairobi the larger Machakos district could benefit from the metropolis.

They alleged that many in­dus­tries that had started in Machakos were forced to re­lo­cate owing to water shortage and cited the East Kenya Bottlers and Kenya Orchards. Though it is true that water shortage in Machakos is legendary, it is doubtful whether water alone and not poor political leadership may have led to the relocation.

They said with the expansion of the Nairobi Metropolis up to Macha­kos district, factories that were congested in Nairobi could move to Machakos district once water was availed.

Masaku County council chairman Stanley Mang’eli said Ukambani was endowed with the lots of water because the country’s two biggest rivers-Tana and Athi-crisscrossed the land and could be harnessed to end water and food shortage in the region.

Machakos Mayor Councillor Fidelis Munyao said the Gov­ernment was rehabilitating Maruba dam with Sh350 million noting that local leaders were mounting pressure on the Gov­ernment to construct a sec­ond dam at Muwongoni in or­der to satisfy the town’s water needs.

Machakos Town MP Dr Victor Munyaka said that water from Mt Kilimanjaro through the Nol Turesh pipeline that was created in the 1990s to solve water prob­lems in Machakos was di­verted into flower farms and other townships.” (This too is very debatable, and highly specu­lative coming from a Member f Par­liament because water on this line is pilfered all the way and the pump station at Kima op­erates well below capacity such that water shortage is ex­pe­ri­enced by all users beyong the pump station, the flower farms in­cluded.)

At the end of the event, it emerged that locals were just involved in another talk shop where no clear ideas emerged as to how to move Machakos ahead to the next stage.

Even as water remains a crucial issue, Machakos is in need of new leadership direction and clear ideas on how to safeguard in­ter­ests of the locals when the metropolis finally comes.

As it is, the locals are ill pre­pared to face the challenges of a big city. First, the local economy is not in the hands of the locals. Businesses, many of which do not need water to survive are collapsing like a pack of cards each day as locals shun credit or do not have the means to borrow so as to invest.

Even within the strategic in­vestments like ranches and large commercial coffee es­tates, local political and business lead­ership is trooping there to share out the range land so as to sell it to those with the money-obviously non locals as locals are broke and being edged out of the CDB.

Observers see the meetings being organized by those driving the metropolis dream as good opportunities to re-alignment and stock taking. But if they are founded on a platform of mourning and chest-thumping, then by the time the metropolis is here, one may need to be shown of what benefit it will be to locals who have no means to contribute to its well-being.

Schedule of Mass, and Worship in Machakos Town churches

REDEEMED GOSPEL CHURCH, Eastleigh

First service: 8.00 AM – 10.45 AM.

Second service: 11.00 AM – 1.30 PM.

Our Lady of Lords Cathedral, (Catholic)

First service {ENGLISH.}: 7.00 AM – 8.30 AM.

Second service {KISWAHILI.}: 8.30 AM – 10.30 AM.

Third service {KIKAMBA.}: 10.30 AM – 12.00 PM.

A .C .K, All Souls Cathedral

First service {ENGLISH.}: 7.30 AM – 9.00 AM.

Second service {ENGLISH}: 9.15 AM – 11.15 AM.

Third service {KISWAHILI}: 11.30 AM – 1.00 PM.

African Brotherhood Church- Bomani

First service {ENGLISH.}: 8.30 AM – 10.15 AM

Second service {KISWAHILI.}: 10.30 AM – 1.00 PM

Africa Inland Church, Bomani

First service: ENGLISH: 8.30AM – 10.30AM.

Second service: KISW. 10.45AM – 1.00PM.

Morning Glory: 6.00 AM – 7.00 AM MON – SAT.

Lunch Hour Fellowship: 12.45PM – 1.45PM.

Mid-Week Prayer Fellowship WED: 5.00PM – 6.00PM.

VP’s wife to build destitute home

Ahadi project an ini­tiative of the Vice President’s wife, Pauline Kalonzo, is set to start destitute home in Mwingi and Kyuso dis­tricts to provide basic needs for the or­phans and re­ha­bili­tate street children in the districts.

The project that has been si­lently aiding the orphans and street children in various areas in the country would soon put up a per­ma­nent home for these des­ti­tute chil­dren in her home district Kyuso to re­alize her call.

Speaking to Muslim women at Mwingi Academy in Mwingi town, where she pre­sented them with IFTAR, food worth Shs 300,000, Pauline said plans were un­der­way to source for a land to build a modern home for the more than 200 orphans she has been supporting while at their guardians home across the two districts. “Plans are at an advanced stage for Ahadi to source for a land as soon as possible to construct the much needed home in order to bring all the orphans and street children together where I can serve them better,” she said.

How­ever she ve­he­mently de­nied that the project was as a result of the con­tro­ver­sial Shs 400,000 salary she accepted from the State.The salary was offered by the Head of Civil Service Francis Muthaura to be paid to her and Ida Raila the wife of the Prime Minister Raila Odinga but Ida turned the down the offer.

Pauline accepted the salary, saying she would use it on charities. She told re­porters that she was yet to get the said salary and she wasn’t going to use it to con­struct the home be­cause the plan to build it was over­due. ”I will construct it from my own pocket plus my friends do­nations,” she said.

The Muslim women through their rep­re­sen­tative Farida Ali de­cried of what they termed as violation to their re­li­gious human rights by some schools in the Dis­trict. Farida said Thitani Sec­ondary School , Masavi Secondary School and Kasina Pri­mary School has denied Mus­lim stu­dents their right to worship while at school. “Fe­male Muslim students are being pun­ished for wearing hijab, de­nied a place to worship and forced to shave their hair contrary to our religious de­mands,” she told the VP’s wife.

Pauline who was accom­pa­nied by her long time friend Mrs. Hellen Ndeti told the gath­ering that there was freedom of worship in the country and people should not be denied their right to worship. She however said in Education department there were laid down guide­lines to be followed to settle issues and prom­ised that the issue would be sorted out soon by the District Edu­cation Office.

Catholics unveil University plan for machakos as deal is signed

HOPE for the revival of the Cocacola East Kenya Bottlers is sealed.

Now, the Nairobi Bottlers Limited together with the Catholic Diocese of Macha­kos have signed a deal to start a University in the premises in Macha­kos town.

Under the partnership agreement, the new in­sti­tution is set to kick off in the first quarter of 2009.

The agreement was signed by the Nairobi Bottlers Board chairman Mr.Chris Kirubi and the Machakos Catholic Bishop Rt. Rev. Martin Musonde Kivuva and witnesed by the Company’s Chief Executive Officer Mr.Daryl Wilson among others.

The new institution will start operating as the Machakos Institute of De­vel­opment Studies (MIDS) before it is upgraded into a full-fledged technical University within the next few years.

Mr.Kirubi said his company will initially provide the 27.5 acre site where the former East Kenya Bottlers plant stood along with the buildings and facilities on it. He said phase one of the project is expected to cost Sh.35m excluding the land and buildings.

“We shall also put in two shillings for every one shilling that the Catholic Church will invest in the project “, Mr. Kirubi added.

He said the project has already been approved by the Ministry of Higher Education and is being supported by the Nairobi Bottler’s parent company, South Africa Bottling Company.

Bishop Kivuva said the starting of the new institution is a dream come true for him and the entire catholic church.

He said the first batch of 70 students will be re-located from the church’s Media Centre Near Machakos Gold Club along the Machakos-Kangundo road.

Lobby opposes Biosafety Bill 2008

The Kenya Biodiversity Coalition (KBioC) held peaceful street demonstration in Machakos town to oppose the proposed en­actment of Biosafety bill 2008.

Addressing the Press at the St. Paul’s Pastoral Centre rep­re­sen­tatives of the 54 member coalition said the public and other stakeholders had not been fully consulted in the draft preparation of the bill resulting ina “a flawed draft prepa­ration process.

In the press statement read by the Managing Director of the Embu based Kubukubu Agro-organic Products Mr Jack Rware, they urged members of parliament to reject the bill until ad­equate consultation was done with individuals, communities and civil society groups in order to be strengthened by all stakeholders.

They said that foreign funding from several foundations and profit-driven agrochemical and seed multinational companies were influencing and pushing for the enactment of the bill.

They said that while scientific innovations were welcome, the Government and leaders should put the interest of Kenyans first and promote homegrown, appropriate and sustainable technologies.

They said the Biosafety Bill 2008 does not adequately address the interference on the country’s ecosystems that include food web, animal and plant diversity and mutations which could cause irre­versible damage to the ecosystem.

They said the bill was in conflict with the Environmental Man­agement Co-ordination Act 1999 which provides for En­vi­ron­men­tal Impact and Risk man­agement of any activity before implementation.

The coalition says that the medium and long term effects of Ge­netically Modified Organisms (GMOs) on human health and environment were still unknown and so many countries were entitled to reject GMOs.

The coalition also argues that the Biosafety Bill 2008 does not protect seeds from local farmers that stand to be contaminated by open pollination and eradicate traditional seeds.

They said it would create a dependency syndrome of small scale farmers on multinational seed companies that demand payment of royalties on patented GMO seeds.

They said the GMOs are touted as solutions for food security but even with high yielding seed verities, food security had remained elusive and called for adoption of local indigenous knowledge and coping strategies as means to food security.

They argued that instead of incorporating the concept that new technologies must not be adopted until their safety is proven, the Biosafety Bill 2008 does not apply that precaution.

The demonstrators who walked along the Katumani-Machakos Road through the town centre to the DC’s office were later addressed by Nairobi Metropolitan Development Minister Mr. Mutula Kilonzo whom they confronted while paying a courtesy call on the DC Mr Bernard Kinyua.

Mr Kilonzo assured the protestors that the bill would not be passed until a consensus was reached among all stakeholders as it posed great risks to the country if it went unscrutinised.

Others who addressed the press were the Kenya Small Scale Farmers Forum National Treasurer Mr. Justus Lavi, the General Secretary of the Mwala Solidarity Fund for Development Mr Nelson Mung’ala among others.

Learn crucial lessons frm Ngilu, Ex Masinga MP Kiluta tells VIce President

Former assistant minister Col. (Rtd) Ronald Kiluta is telling Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka to learn a big lesson from Water and Irrigation Minister Charity Ngilu’s 1997 presi­den­tial bid where she was tricked and betrayed by MPs from Central Kenya.

Mr Kiluta termed claims by four PNU MPs that central province votes will go to Musyoka’s presidential bid 2012 as a big joke and misleading.

”We know very well they are trying to confuse Mr Kalonzo in a delaying tactic to prevent him from re-aligning with the popular group likely to win the 2012 polls’’ said Mr Kiluta.

Some four PNU MPs from central province, George Thuo, Dick Wathika, Waitutu among other assured Musyoka that all the central province votes will go to him in order to win the 2012 presi­den­tial polls.

But Mr Kiluta described the utterances as far fetched with intend to confuse and retain Mr Musyoka within PNU and later dump him. ”These people cheated Mrs Charity Ngilu the same way in 1997 and it is the high time Musyoka takes pre­caution before he’s retained and later dumped in a dustbin’’ said Mr Kiluta.

The former Masinga legislator also took issue with the group for pointing an accusing finger to constitutional affairs minister Martha Karua for declaring her interest in the presi­den­tial race.

”They should not under rate the minister or criticize her since she has every constitutional right to contest for any seat that is not a preserve for certain individuals’’ he said.

The MPs had taken issue with the minister for her declaration to vie for the top seat come 2012 saying she was wasting her time.

On the Krigler Report, Mr Kiluta criti­cized Kangundo MP Johnstone Muthama, for saying that Kivuitu and his group were going no where. ”At least some leaders should weigh their words before they utter them for they will describe the caliber of leaders they are’’ said Mr Kiluta.

Mr Muthama who accompanied the PNU colleagues from central province said ECK is there to stay and those agitating for their exit should know that the Kibaki administration was headed by ‘Wanaume’

Ngilu’s master plan to fight famine

WATER and Irrigation Minister Charity Kaluki Ngilu has devised an instrument to overlap the policy of feeding the citizens with relief food. The minister said that such a move increases poverty among the people, adding that the citizens should be assisted to be self reliant instead of being given relief food.

The minister regretted the rate at which poverty level was ripping through the Ukambani region. And she announced a range of measures that she has already undertaken eradicate the problem among her Kitui Central constituents. She announced that she is going to buy some dairy goats, eggs chickens, bee-hives and drought-resistant food crops seeds among others for every household within her constituency.

Ngilu was speaking to thousands of her constituents during the Kitui Kamba Cultural Festival at the Kitui Municipal Stadium where Sh 15m was raised to help fund her instrument.

The Kiambaa Member of Parliament Stanley Munga Githuguri was the chief guest at the function. “My people have suffered enough and I am out to do all I can to help them,” Ngilu said amid gyratory cheers of joy from her con­stitu­ents. “We the leaders must be held accountable for our people and we must deliver on promise,” she added. The minister advised her people to plan their families as part of ridding them­selves of poverty. Ngilu, who is also the NARC leader, said that the Parliament is for men and women. “And if the majority of Members of Parliament are women, the august house will be good. The thieves are men. If you hear of thieves, it is the men. We must ask ourselves what our people will be,” the Kitui Central MP said.

On his part, the Kitui West MP Charles Mutisya Nyamai hit out at the Vice President Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, complaining that he (Musyoka) had done nothing for his Kamba community in terms of de­vel­opment. Nyamai at the same time asked the Kitui District Commissioner Joshua K.Chepchieng, who was present, to evict some squatters from the Katoteni, Kanyonyoo and B2 Yatta Ranching Co­op­erative Societies in

Kwa Vonza location in Kitui West .

The MP said: “We don’t want to have a Mau Forest situation in Kitui District.” Addressing the gathering, the Wajir North MP Mohammed Hussein Gabbow com­plained that the more than 40 million shillings allocated to his con­stituency by the government during the 2006-2007 national budget es­ti­mates was mis­appro­priated by the gluttonous. Gabbow at the same time complained that the National Water Conservation and Pipeline Corporation was not managing the country’s water services boards effectively. And he therefore appealed to the Water and Irrigation Minister to authorize the water services boards to control the boards’ tendering process. He said that the boards are playing a supervisory role.

And the Kitui DC disclosed that the district has a population of about 500,000 people whom he said that 65 percent of them live below poverty line. The DC said that the problem forces them to give out some 40,000 bags of relief maize to the needy each month. “I and my technical officers are un­der­taking measures to reduce poverty in the district one by one,” Chepchieng added. Addressing the gath­ering, the Kiambaa MP Stanley Munga Githuguri said that many of the male Kenyan Members of Parliament are Satans. “They are not good people. You see somebody laughing with you but he prays for you to die,” he said. The Youth Affairs Assistant Minister Wavinya Ndeti highly thanked the Kitui Central con­stitu­ents for returning Ngilu to Parliament during the ountry’s last year’s general election. Ndeti described Ngilu as a Kenyan hero. She said that 75 percent of Kenyans are youths and that they want development and not mere political rhetoric. Ndeti lambasted some leaders who are now talking about the 2012 general election, saying that the leaders should serve the public instead of talking politics.

The Kathiani MP said that the Kenyans will return the only performing leaders to elective positions during the 2012 general elections. Ndeti asked the youths in the country to benefit them­selves through the National Youth Development Fund (NYDF). On her part, the Tourism Assistant Minister Cecily Mbarire announced that every region of Kenya is going to have a tourism circuit. She asked tourists to tour Kitui District if they want to know about the Kamba culture. Mbarire, who is the Runyenjes MP, highly commended the Kitui Central constituents for returning Ngilu to Par­liament. “You did not look at political wave. You chose the leader. You have shown some political maturity. Ngilu is a leader with vision,” she told the gath­ering.

The head of the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) Archbishop Benjamin Paul Mwanzia Nzimbi and Members of Parliament Julius Kiema Kilonzo (Kitui East) and Charles M.Kilonzo did not attend the function with apologies. Others who also addressed the gath­ering included the National Water Trust Fund chairman, Professor Charles Nzioka and the Kitui branch of the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) chairman Bajaber Aziz.

The Kitui Mayor Patrick Makasi Muindi also addressed the function. Present included the Kitui District Officer 1 Fredrick Kiteme and the local District Officer, Mrs. Priscilla Wanyiri.

Minister Ngilu presided over a fundraiser in aid of the Kitui Central Development Association (KICEDA) that realized 15 million shillings.

Proceeds f the harambeee are being used to purchase a variety of Locally improved goats (especially dairy)

The plan is to buy over 400 of them and spread them across the constituency to commence a process of altering the goat variety.

Other proceeds will be used to buy locally improved chicken that will be distributed to needy families so that they can begin to produce eggs and chicken for sale.

Mrs. Ngilu also plans to use the funds to initiate honey production by buying bee hives that needy families will manage.

As we went to Press, Mrs. Ngilu begun imple­menting her anti poverty strategy by dis­trib­uting seeds for dry land farming like Pigeon peas, Green grams, Millet/Sor­ghum, Sun flower, Cowpeas red pepper pumpkins, groundnuts water melons etc.

Rabid beast stirs Kaiti

A RABID beast is causing panic in a village in Mukuyuni after hungry villagers feasted on meat from animals bitten by it.This caused fear and apprehension to residents of Muthini Village in Mukuyuni location of Makueni district after they ate goat meat that died from rabies in a hunger driven feast. The a rabid honey badger attacked 17 cattle and other animals in lightning strikes.

Since the rabid beast invaded the village, five cattle and a goat have died after developing full blown rabies while many of the remaining cattle have started exhibiting signs of rabies.

After realising the goat they ate was rabid, the villagers who ate the meat were forced to rush to hospital for treatment.. Local MP and Assistant Minister for Agriculture Gideon Ndambuki found himself giving out one of his vehicles to take residents to hospital where at least 300 were inoculated.

One dog that was bitten by the honey badger after it crossed its path has since gone rabid and bit a child who is admitted at the Makueni district Hos­pi­tal. Now a difficult hunt for the beast has been launched by KWS rangers in the dense Mukuyuni and surrounding hills. Villagers here now dare not go home in darkness as no one knows when the usually swift beast would strike.

Mr Julius Manza, head of KWS in Machakos Command is leading the search team. The beast locally known as Ndingu or Nthee first struck in the village on August 23 2008.

He said the beast has made sporadic attacks where it has so far bitten 17 cattle, one goat and one dog. The goat and 5 cattle have since died. He said the cattle have been secreting saliva as the viral disease that has no cure once it becomes full blown con­tin­ued to kill infected animals.

Medical experts say once one is bitten by a rabid animal, they should seek medical treatment before the expiry of 21 days after which little can be done to save their lives if the disease develops.

Kangundo: Where gangsters call the shots

A total of 80 people were rounded up by the police following attack of the Matungulu DO in Kangundo dis­trict.

Police say the eighty sus­pects were giving the police good lead into the arrest of the thugs in­volved in the attack of the DO. Criminals in Kangundo have taken thuggery as a hobby . Marauding gangs, moving in groups of between 20-30 terrorize villagers at will and thin out at day break in a society where local administration appears dead and unable to gather evidence that can help stem the terror.

Kangundo has been under con­stant siege by gang­sters who raid villages and markets at will. Residents attribute the thuggery to that fact that local police do not have enough vehicles to enable quick response to attacks. Macha­kos OCPD re­cently released a single vehicle to Kangundo Police to help police an area where the police-gang­ster ratio is simply over­whelming. Put another way, Kangundo resi­dents are on their own and the best they can do is to set up own – Kienyeji- strategies to fight crime as police appear clearly unable to do a thing other than react as fire fighters do to fires.

Another cause of attack is said to be the fact that the main command is in Machakos, over 60 kms away since the district still awaits the for­mation of a police command after it was hived off from Macha­kos.

Armed gangsters numbering more than ten invaded the resi­dence of the DO Ms. Mar­ga­ret Githaiga near Tala town and stole some cash after over­pow­ering her body guard who is an ad­min­is­tration police officer.The Anchor un­der­stood that the DO lived among local residents and thugs may not have known who thwy were targeting.

The DO was not injured during the incident that took about thirty minutes but the AP sus­tained mi­nor injuries during his struggle with the thugs. This is the first incident of the kind in the area which had been calm for quite some time.

Endless terror on Iveti Hills

THREE suspects have been charged with the murder of two traders of Lita Market.

It is the first time that anyone has been charged with murder arising from this area where crime has attained some levels of no­to­ri­ety. The suspects- Peter Musyoki Pius,Paul Kyalo Kimeu and Ber­nard Muriuka appeared be­fore Machakos Principal Magistrate Julia Oseko to answer charges under the hanging Act. She re­manded them in police cus­tody as they were required in Makueni over a simi­lar offence.

Lawlessness returned to Lita area of Kathiiani Location with a bang three weeks ago after a long lull. This time round, gangsters killed two busi­nessmen in a night of terror.

After surviving several attacks in the past, soft drinks dis­tributor Silvester Muithya Matheka finally met his death under the hands of criminals.

A five man gang armed with an AK 47 assault rifle raided the businessman’s home at Mitondoni village at about 1.00am and killed him as his wife Martha screamed for help.

At Lita market, the gangsters broke into the rented house of a local butcher, Patrick Nduva Maweu and shot him in the stom­ach.

The late Muithya’s wife, Lydia told reporters that they heard a knock on the door from people who told them they were gangsters.

Her husband quickly armed him­self with a spear as the gang­sters struggled to cut widow grills through which they managed to shoot him in the head, killing him instantly.

She said she surrendered some Sh.220, 000.00 and two mo­bile phones to the gangsters who left for Lita market, about 300 meters from their home.

Her mobile phone was later traced to Mutituni area, a few ki­lo­me­ters from Machakos town and the police are holding a sus­pect for questioning on how it got into his hands.

Senior police officers led by the Acting Eastern Provincial In­ves­ti­gations Officer Ms.Lilian Kiamba and Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of Administration in the province Mr.Samuel Kimaru visited the scene as in­ves­ti­gations got un­der­way.

The general area of Lita, Kaviani and Nzaikoni, located atop Iveti Hills has been eventful in terms of crime. Businessmen have been killed and others have es­caped death by a whisker as gangs hunt them down.

Former Kathiiani CDF chairman Philip Mutiso alias Wambithe who is a prominent busi­nessman in the area was once shot on his leg by a gang that has terrorized the area for a long time and po­lice believe that business rivalry may have a hand in he killings. Nev­er­theless, police appear unable to unravel the streak of murder cases in the area.

Kiamba said the manner in which the gangster attacked the two indicated they knew where they were going.

“It is not possible to get to a resi­den­tial plot and head straight to a particular room mid way, leaving the rest”, she explained.

She said the DCIO Machakos Mr.M.Seif has been tasked to gather intelligence information and look into the nature of the previous attacks on the de­ceased.

“We appeal to the members of the public and even the media to assist us in our efforts to eradi­cate crime”. The detective confirmed police in Kangundo are holding some sus­pects in connection with the recent killings in the area.

Ex-Kyanzavi directors on theft charge

Four former directors of Kyanzavi coffee farmers company Ltd in Kangundo district were arraigned in a Nairobi court charged with theft of sh2.1million be­longing to the company.The suspects, Ju­das Mbili Ndawa, Patrick Mutune Katuvi, Joseph Kivuva Kioko and Christopher Kanyambu appeared before the senior resi­dent mag­is­trate M/s Nyambura of the city hall law courts facing eight counts of theft.

The four who are also facing other cases of simi­lar nature in different courts in Nairobi denied the charge and re­leased on a cash bond of Sh100, 000 each.

They were said to have jointly committed the offence on February 11, 2008 while being directors of the com­pany.

The hearing of the case was fixed for October 30.

The court was packed with en­thu­si­as­tic shareholders who turned up in large num­bers to know the fate of their money.

Meanwhile, shareholders of the company have resolved that none of the former di­rectors will be allowed to participate in the company’s leadership in fu­ture even if they are ac­quitted by the court.

“We have lost faith in them and we shall not at any one given time allow them to lead our com­pany’’ said the aggrieved shareholders.

“These are people who do not deserve any mercy for having exploited and almost run down our company’’ they said.

The angry shareholders resolved to administer Akamba tra­di­tional oath called ‘’Kithitu’ against the four should they fail to return alleged stolen money.

‘’If they want peace with us they should return all our money they have not been able to account for failure to which they will have it rough from us’’ they said.

OCS sacked and charged

By Betty Munyithya.

A Police officer who assaulted a Kenya Power and Light­ening com­pany employee during the Eve of the New Year was sacked and sub­se­quently arraigned in the Mwingi Law court to answer counts of assault and dam­aging property.

The then Mwingi deputy Officer Commanding Station (OCS) Mr. Ezekiel Bitok Kiptoo received his letter of dismissal from the Po­lice Commissioner Major General Hussein Ali though his boss Jane Sang and was imme­di­ately arrested.

He was forced to spend a night in the Mwingi police cells where he normally locked up suspects be­fore appearing before the Mwingi Prin­ci­pal Mag­is­trate Mr. Daniel Ochenja to answer two counts of assaulting Mr. Jacob Kyule Maithya and damaging his property worth Shs 42,000 on January 1 2008.

He denied the two charges brought against him and was re­leased on a cash bail of Shs 50,000 and a bond of Shs 100,000 with a surety of simi­lar amount. The case was set for hearing on November 13, 2008.

Beastly men of Kaveani

TWO beastly men of Kaviani Mar­ket are facing life im­pris­onment in the face after gang raping a girl.

The thirteen year old girl is ad­mitted at the Machakos gen­eral hospital in serious con­dition after she was gang raped by five men in a horrific over­night ordeal.

Two of the suspects were arrested after the area chief Mr Boniface Mumo got the shocking in­for­mation early in the morning and sub­se­quently raided their homes.

The standard six pupil was accosted by the men as she went home from Kaviani market in Macha­kos district shortly after 8.30pm. They dragged her to a nearby thicket and assaulted her in turns till about 5.00 am when they left her for dead. The other three managed to es­cape the dragnet as they had left their homes at the time of the raid probably after being in­formed their accomplices had been arrested. The Chief said the girl managed to drag herself to the road in the freezing morning temperatures of Iveti hills where she was assisted by good Samaritans.

She narrated to the villagers of Kaviani the brutality meted on her by the five men who are her neighbours and identified them during the eight-hour ordeal.

A medic at the hospital said the girl was passing urine with blood as doctors continued to treat and con­duct tests on her. He condition was said to be se­rious but stable with her mother con­stantly by her side.

Meanwhile, a middle aged woman committed suicide in a hotel room in the middle of Macha­kos town. She took poi­son moments after taking a hearty meal of chips and chicken. The woman who is reported to have come from Yatta district was found lying in the bed with a half filled bottle of a pesticide la­belled on the bottle as Lannate 90sp be­side her

Strong defence for tourists

TIRED that police will not successfully deal with thuggery, Kaloleni residents in Machakos stoned to death three suspected robbers in a foiled robbery.

The three armed with black painted wooden toy pistols were killed by irrate mmbers of public who cornered them at Kaloleni market on the Machakos-Kangundo road.

Machakos Deputy OCPD Simon Gitonga said the gangsters had earlier robbed six people of money and mobile phones at the local gravity tourist attraction point near Kaloleni. They emerged from the bush bran­dishing the toy pistols and a knife and attacked the three men and three women as they enjoyed the scenery where vehicles and wa­ter defy gravi­ta­tional forces.

Gitonga said a driver of one of the vihicles was stabbed and injured at the left side of his eye in the en­suing scuffle before they sped off in the other vehicle towards Kaloleni mar­ket.

He said one of the men in the ad­ven­ture team jumped into the second car and followed the gang­sters whose escape car stalled at the market after the engine went off. “As the panicked gangsters attempted to open the doors of the car to escape, the man chasing them arrived shouting “thieves, thieves”, attracting members of the public to the scene”, said Gitonga.

Armed with stones, rungus and other crude weapons, the irate mem­bers of the public pounced on the gangsters and killed them.

Machakos DCIO Seif Mamburuk who rushed to the scene moments later said they recovered the stolen car, money and mobile phones from the dead suspects.

Strong worded ruling in arson case sends shock waves

EVEN as a Machakos Court set free four school boys charged with burning down a dormitory at Kitie Sec­ondary School, the ruling amounts to an in­dictment of the school’s man­agement as a whole.The ruling is so harsh on the ad­min­is­tration of the school that Principals with similar cases pending in court are having sleepless nights and stupor on their part is likely to be exposed in court.

Kitie Sec­ondary school students were discharged under Section 210 of the Criminal Procedure Code by the Macha­kos Se­nior Principal Mag­is­trate Mrs. Julia Oseko for lack of evi­dence to warrant them to be put on their de­fenses. The accused- Masters Stephen Muli Kithimba, Zacheus Mutua Munguti, Michael Wambua and Suleiman Kioko Keya were charged that on July 26,2008, they willfully and un­lawfully set on fire a dor­mitory at the school.

Mrs. Oseko took on Principal Simon Kitheka, dismissing him as dis­honest and that he lied to the court in an effort to have the boys convicted for other reasons and not evidence adduced.

She chided the school’s ad­min­is­tration for not having a gate or a perimeter fence, cre­ating an opportunity for any­one to walk into the school and set the dormitory ablaze.

She said the fact that the school did not have a pe­rim­eter fence and a gate exposed the school to a free for all situation where strangers could gain entrance from every cor­ner.

The court took issue with the in­ves­ti­gating officer Mr.Joseph Keru for displaying sheer incompetence, adding po­lice investigators are supposed to be factual.

The Magistrate said the in­ves­ti­gators are required to avail equal protection to both the accused and the accusers as they area both consumers of jus­tice.

He was accused of “trusting” the school administration by assuming they were telling him the truth. “He even trusted the Principal who was even not present at the time of the said incident”. The Investigating Officer, she la­mented was unable to identify the accused students in court adding “it is surprising when an in­ves­ti­gating officer fails to iden­tify people he has taken be­fore court”.

The Magistrate said it was her con­sid­ered opinion that the In­ves­ti­gating Officer did not in­ves­ti­gate the case at all and that the boys were in court purely be­cause Mr Kitheka identified them for arrest without any shred of evi­dence of their culpability.

Dismissing the case, Mrs. Oseko said there was no evidence to indicate the involvement of the four accused students either in­di­vidually or jointly. “This is a case that should not have been brought to this court”, she declared as she set the accused persons free, triggering cel­ebrations outside the court­room as the boys hugged their parents and relatives.

The Anchor will run verbatim the ruling by Magistrate Oseko in the next issue. It is a compelling read!

Bursary: Mwingi DC warns

By Betty Munyithya

UKNOWN people are likely ben­efi­cia­ries of bursaries in Mwingi District. They use spu­rious names, identity card numbers and even false locations- yet the chiefs en­dorse the applications.

Consequently, Mwingi District Commissioner, Mr. Peter Kinuthia is warning Chiefs and their assis­tant against signing bursary application forms without proper verification of would be ben­efi­ciary details.

Mr. Kinuthia said some un­known people were out to ben­efit from bursaries allo­cated from the Min­is­try of education and the Con­stituency De­vel­opment fund by giving false in­for­mation. He said unless the administration scrutinizes all the information before signing the forms, many undeserving cases would end up benefiting at the expense de­serving students.

Speaking at Musukini primary school in Mwingi central division where Kenya Charity Sweepstake donated Sh. 200,000 for building school latrine, Mr. Kinuthia said, some unscrupulous people wanted to benefit from the bur­sary fund by doubling the num­ber of the orphans in the dis­trict.

He said the education board re­alized that the forms for­warded were too many than it has usually been the case and wondered whether there could have been a calamity that swept parents in the district within such a short period to justify the appli­cations.

The DC said Chiefs and their assis­tants should be in the fore­front of identifying the de­serving cases since they knew their peoples back­ground better. “I will hold you re­spon­sible if un­de­serving cases gets that fund,” Mr. Kinuthia told Chiefs.

Mr. Salesa Andano, the Dis­trict Education Officer said edu­cation should be treated with a lot of concern. He said the district per­for­mance was not en­cour­aging adding that good performance in the National ex­ami­nation is a collective re­spon­si­bility and parents should stop shifting the blame to the teachers.

Mr. Andano further said teachers’ harassment cases due to imagi­nary Jinis have taken a toll in the education per­for­mance hence leading to low education standards in the district.

“Jinns do not exist in edu­cation environment and these are just mere campaigns to re­move teachers in schools once par­ents are fed up with them.” He said

The Angry Mr. Andano warned the parents against the con­tin­ued harassment of the teachers adding that if it persists they would be with­drawn to where education is needed most. “As parents let’s support the gov­ernment initiative of em­ploying teachers to raise edu­cation standards in the coun­try,” Andano said.

Kitui Sacco reduces loans backlog

By Boniface Mulu

Kitui Teachers SACCO Society’s chairman, Mr. Anithony K.Mbiti has announced that the society has been able to reduce the loans backlog to one month.

Teachers who are members of the sacco feel the timeframe is a reasonable waiting period. Mbiti said that the demand for loans from their members is growing day by day “which means we need to strengthen our capital base which can be achieved by increasing our monthly con­tri­butions.” The chairman dis­closed that the loans granted to members from January 2008 to Sep­tem­ber 2008 amounted to a total of 513,740,400 shillings. The said amount is BOSA loans (318,725,900 shillings), special loans (95,648,700 shillings) and salary advances (36,365,800 shillings). Mbiti said that of late some of their members have developed a tendency of loan defaulting. “You find that a mem­ber gets a loan from the society and before this loan gets fully repaid, he/she gets another loan from a commercial bank which leads to non recovery of the SACCO loan,” he said.

The society chairman said that other members get FOSA loans only to change their pay point to other commercial banks re­sulting to non re­cov­ery of FOSA loans. He told the members that if this trend continues, the society’s man­agement will have no other alternative other than re­cov­ering those loans from the guarantors.

Mbiti said: “At this juncture I want to advise our members to shy off from bank loans which if not well managed cause some of our members withdraw from the society which is a very bad move taking into account that this might be the only savings this member has.”

He said that the society is offering the ATM facility in con­junction with the Co­op­erative Bank of Kenya . He also announced that the members with ATM cards are able to with­draw money from any visa enabled ATM booth. “We re­quest all our members to make use of the facility by applying for the ATM cards through the society. We hope when the Cooperative Bank of Kenya opens a branch in Kitui District, the withdrawal charges through the ATM will be rea­sonable,” Mbiti added.

On his part, the local Kenya Na­tional Union of Teachers (KNUT) executive secretary, Mr. Joseph Mwanzia Makuthu, announced that the teachers in this country will not sign the per­for­mance contract. “I am talking as a member of the KNUT National Executive Council and not as a Kitui KNUT branch ex­ecutive secretary. We have said no and no is no,” Makuthu said. “The government has been tossing teachers like a ball,” the unionist com­plained. Addressing the gathering, the Mwingi branch of the KNUT executive sec­re­tary, Mr. Jonathan Kimanzi Mutambu, pleaded with the Kenya Union of Post- Primary Teachers (KUPPET) members and officials to return to the KNUT. Mutambu further called upon the government to hasten to give the country’s teachers what they are asking for in order to have them to work comfortably. He announced that the Kenyan teachers are tired to all the time being given a salary increment by the government by pressurizing it

The function was also addressed by among others the Kitui Teachers SACCO Society’s general manager, Mr. Jonathan M. Kiema, the Mutomo District Cooperative Officer, Mr. Leonard J. Syengo and the Kyuso branch of the KNUT executive sec­re­tary, Mrs. Susan Kambua Musee.

Woman elected first Kyuso KNUT branch Executive Secretary

By Betty Munyithya

Agnes Kambua Musee is the first Branch Executive Sec­re­tary for newly created Kyuso District branch of the Kenya National Union of Teachers ( KNUT). She becomes the second woman in the history of KNUT to occupy the prestigious Ex­ecutive secretary seat by trouncing three male con­tenders.

Agnes Kambua a head teacher at Nyamanzei Primary School garnered 296 votes while the former Mwingi KNUT branch chairman, Mr. Tumbo trailed her with 163 votes. Ms Kambua now becomes the second woman to occupy the executive secretary seat of the giant KNUT, the first one is from Butere branch.

Other officials were Jerimond Mwasya Kimwele who was elected as the chairman, Maluki Ndana elected the branch trea­surer and Mary Mwendwa elected woman representative of the new branch.

The elections were overseen by the union’s Acting Sec­re­tary Gen­eral Laurence Majali. Majali maintains that teachers would not sign the controversial per­for­mance contract even if they were awarded their salary in­crement.

Mr. Majali said teachers were not begging for their salary in­crement because it was their right and could not exchange it with the signing of the per­for­mance con­tract.

He further said that teachers have been working under a de­fined performance contract in their scheme of work that in­cluded lesson plan, teaching, testing and remedial teaching. “These are structures of per­for­mance contract” he said amid cheers from the 1020 union members of the branch that turned out at Kyuso Secondary School to elect their new offi­cials.

Mr. Majali said, “Teachers have a strong union to address their issues and it was not in order for the Government officials to con­tinue with their roadside dec­la­rations that teachers must sign the performance contract without caring to consult their union officials first.”

“We think that what has been happening is tasting teachers mighty and we will want to show them that we are stronger than they imagined” he quipped amid strike, strike, strike cheers from teachers.

Mr. Majali said that although ne­go­tiations were ongoing be­tween the teachers union and the ministry of Education things were not working as expected. He asked teachers to be ready to down their tools should the worse become the worst.

The Prime Minister Raila Odinga has maintained that every civil servant must sign performance contract and teachers were not exceptional.

The prime Minister has more than twice made it clear that teachers must sign the per­for­mance con­tract to be measured with during pro­motions and salary in­crements but Mr. Majali told teachers that promotion and salary increment should not be pegged on the performance con­tract. He said that these were teachers right.

Signs of inept leadership emerge

Get serious in fighting pov­erty, DO EFFECTS of political ex­pe­diency and myopic leadership are now creeping into Ukambani as resi­dents face conflicts with wildlife in worrying proportions.

Only three years ago, the clamour by shareholders for sub-division of the vast ranches- Aimi ma Kilungu , Kiu and Malili ranches- to turn them to farm­lands reached its peak as environmental and wildlife con­ser­va­tionists opposing the move.

However, political expedience outdid genuine environmental and wildlife concerns as local leaders fronted by then Kilome MP Mutinda Mutiso and the pushed the Na­tional En­vi­ronment Man­agement Au­thority (NEMA) to give a nod to the plan even when the writings were on the wall.

Earlier, the authority had re­jected the proposal to sub-di­vide the ranches noting that the ranch man­agement had not submitted an Environmental Im­pact Assessment Report de­tailing what effects the sub-division would cause on en­vi­ronment.

The conservationists had ar­gued that turning the ranches into farm­land would cause de­ser­ti­fi­cation and block the wildlife migration corridor from Tsavo and Amboseli parks to parts of Ukambani, Rift Valley and Nairobi National Park.

They also argued that the land was most suited for ranching or wildlife conservation and turning it into agricultural use would have far reaching environmental effects like drought, de­for­es­tation, soil erosion among others.

Speaking during the burial of a popular Makueni Councillor David Musau at the height of the clamour, the then minister for En­vi­ronment and now Vice Presi­dent Kalonzo Musyoka, unashamedly said he would pre­vail on NEMA to allow the con­version of the ranches into farmlands.Musau, alias Mashambani was a right hand man to Kalonzo and was at the fore­front in the campaign to share out the land to mem­bers.

In spite of the con­ser­va­tionists’ spirited contest of the decision to convert the land to farms that saw the ranch subdivided into 10 acre plots followed by a massive human settlement, po­litical con­sid­er­ations held sway.

The shareholders frustrated with continuous loss making by the ranches under various man­agement teams, had also pushed for sub-di­vision to enable them make use of the land in other ways or sell it.

Later, a South African company was reported to have been in­ter­ested in buying the ranches at very attractive prices a move that gave thrust the sub-division pressure.

Only about four years later, what the environmentalists and wild­life conservationists warned against has come to pass with increased human-wildlife conflicts in­creasing year by year.

What used to be a lush natural forest range land is now a deci­mated arid area, dotted with small farms that may not make economic sense. There is no evi­dence of the South African Investor spoken about to lure shareholders to agree to the di­rectors’ machinations. Even as at now, key directors of the farm still sell land on daily basis, arising from fraudu­lent allo­cations that followed the sub-divisions and the whole are is certainly Ukambani’s Mau Forest.

The Machakos District Warden Mr. Justus Manza is warning of an in­crement of human-wildlife con­flict in parts of Machakos, Makueni and Nzaui district following an influx of wildlife from neighbouring game parks in search of water.

Mr Manza says that in recent weeks wildlife movement from Tsavo and Amboseli and parts of Kajiado dis­trict into parts of Makueni, Macha­kos and Nzaui have been wit­nessed especially in Athi River Area, Lukenya and Kilome areas.

He attributed the movement to water shortage resulting from heavy drought in the region forcing the wildlife to wander in search of wa­ter in their tra­di­tional grazing areas and water points that have now been occupied by human settlement.

He said villages near Kiu sec­ondary school killed a buffalo and sold the meat before Kenya Wildlife Service staff recovered the head.

The war­den who is in charge of the larger Machakos and Makueni districts said that several people have been in­jured by wildlife but they have kept it secret for unknown reasons.

Curious figures from Forest Department

The forest sector in Machakos District raised 2.24 million tree seedlings through private nurs­eries and forest extension services during the last financial year.

This figure is boubtful, given the lethergy afflicting the forestry department in Machakos. More­over, the main seed bed at the head office has been with­out seedlings for a long time.

However there has been qrowing awareness in the private sector and it is possible that the greater chuck for this number is not public oriented.The figures were pre­sented by Deputy DFO Mr Charles Ochieng during a Dis­trict Monitoring and Management Unit meeting.

He said that the forest cover in the district was low adding that they were trying to address the problems of destruction of trees and hills through planting trees and sensitizing the public through extension services.

At the same time Mr. Ochieng’ said that lack of funds was a main set back to de­vel­opment of for­estry in the District adding that some projects have not been com­pleted.

Mr. Ochieng’ said that forested hills like Muumandu, Uuni, Kiteta, have been invaded by squatters who have been diffi­cult to evict.

Devki shows the way as Athi River factories embark on afforestatin

MOST industries within Athi River division – Machakos district have put in place in­ter­ventions to en­sure afforestation.

Spearheading these efforts if in­dus­tri­alist Narendra Raval Guru who is the Chief Ex­ecutive Officer at Devki Steel Plant.

The effort is co­or­di­nated by en­vi­ron­men­talist Mr. Jeremiah Simba where they target over 500,000 for planting within east­ern region.

The campaign under the Cor­po­rate Social Responsibility frame­work has seen most of in­dus­tries es­tab­lish tree nurs­eries, raising different species which can withstand drought.

Guru told The Anchor that the plan is to ensure that the mu­nici­pality has enough trees to mitigate the emitions from in­dus­tries in Athi Rive and added that the strategy will be en­hanced in the coming days. others have been buying tree seeds and es­tab­lished tree nurseries in various institutions as below

Devki alone has been pur­chasing tree seeds of different species and distributing them to various institutions raising over 50,000 seedlings. In October this year, Devki Steel plant is raising over 100,000 seedlings for donation. The firm has collected heaps of red soils from Mua Hills because the Athi-river soils are not wholly supportive to the process, according to Mr Simba.

Guru says the National Cement Company is also developing its own tree nursery to ensure that the neighborhood is afforested ahead of its commencement of cement manufacturing.

“ Our strategy is to ensure that the environment within which we work is under tree cover be­cause we know the advantages that trees bring to our environment”, said Guru

At Primarosa Flowers, a tree nurs­ery was established in April 2008 raising 150,000 seedlings. During the rainy season they will plant 10,000 and donate the rest to in­sti­tutions and commu­nities in Eastern Region.

At Steel Plant,– next to Mto-wa-Mawe, they are raising 20,000 seedlings by November to miti­gate the Carbon Dioxide emitted at the plant. Out of these, 1,000 seedlings will be planted within the factory and the rest dis­trib­uted to local commu­nities.

Athi- stores Ltd, one of the mining companies prac­ticing re­ha­bili­tation after mining at Lukenya Hill, they have raised over 30,000 seedlings which will be used for re­ha­bili­tation at Lukenya, Ngurunga, and Garissa where they ex­tract ma­te­rials.

Last year 2007 the com­pany do­nated over 20,000 seedlings to schools around Kyumbi.

Passolona stones, Bamburi cement, Orbit chemicals, Har­vest Ltd, Warids flower farm, Athi River mining, Abuto springs, chloride (ABM), and Portland cement have also shown some efforts of planting some seed­lings within their pre­mises.

Tree planting in Athi-River area would have progressed well if the Kenya Association of Manu­fac­turers (Athi river Chap­ter) had shown clear support of tree painting within all its member in­dus­tries within but it seems as if they have for­gotten the programme, says Mr Simba

All mining in­dus­tries NEMA should come up with law en­forcement plans to en­sure that they backfill their quarries after mining.” Tree planting should not be for in­ter­ested firms but should be a policy because in­dig­enous trees are lost every time they extract raw ma­te­rials, from fresh grounds.”, he added

“If all Athi river in­dus­tries can support tree planting programme fully, it is possible to raise and plant over 1 million tree seedling per year”, he stressed.

High turn over of Town Clerks

MACHAKOS Town Clerk Stephen Mbondo is moving to Nakuru. His posting to Nakuru comes hardly af­ter one year since he was posted to Macha­kos to succeed Mr Joseph Koech.

His transfer puts in jeopardy the Performance Contract he signed as Town Clerk in Machakos and this time round, evaluation of his per­for­mance remains difficult since the targets he set to achieve can not be met due to the trans­fers.

Local Government sources say the ministry remains the biggest threat to performance of Local Au­thorities due to their irra­tio­nal basis of moving chief officers.

Last year, Machakos Mu­nici­pality was ranked 152 out of Kenya’s 175 Local Authorities in per­for­mance. Mr Koech who had signed a per­for­mance contract to attain cer­tain targets in Macha­kos did not live through the year. It was in con­trast to the per­for­mances of Makueni and Masaku County Coun­cils that had had a stable lead­ership in the preceding year.

Mr Mbondo’s designated successor- Mr P.Ogola who is coming from the Narok County Council will face his evaluators later this year in a coun­cil where he never made any performance commitments. The same thing will happen to Mr Mbondo in Nakuru.

In the last one year, all major Ukambani Local Authorities have had changes at the level of Town Clerks and Trea­surers.

Veteran Local Government offi­cial Timothy Kamili was posted to the County Council of Masaku from City Hall, Mr George Wambua was moved to County Council of Kitui , Mr Wis­dom Mwamburi was moved to Mu­nici­pal Council of Mavoko from Mombasa, Mr Danson Ngugi was el­evated County Clerk to County Council of Makueni and now Mr Ogola to Machakos from Narok. Kitui Municipality and Makueni Town Council have also ex­pe­ri­enced changes in the clerk’s office.

Indeed the changes have also affected Town and County Trea­surers. Joseph Mbatha was posted to Machakos as Trea­surer, Gregory Katiku moved to Masaku County, Mr Richard Mbithi went to Kitui County, Mr Katiti was posted from Molo to Makueni Town Coun­cil and Mrs Rabecca Mutua was el­evated at Makueni County as Trea­surer.

Certainly many other changes that have not been captured in this story have taken place in local council and the same has taken place in other councils in Kenya.

Dubai trip: 48 file re­turns

ONLY 48 councilors have ob­tained passports in readiness for John Harun Mwau’s trip to Dubai.

This is the emerging reality as it became apparent that civic leaders still have a long way to go by first obtaining birth cer­tifi­cates before presenting their applications fro pass­ports.

Trip coordinator Davis Musau said the reality emerged when coun­cil­ors were called upon to provide details of their pass­ports. Many of the coun­cil­ors turned up without a copy of passport as re­quired and said they needed assis­tance to trigger fast issuance of Birth Certificates.

Kitui County has the highest num­ber of civil leaders with pass­ports. 11 councilors have made returns accordingly. Mwingi County, Masaku County, Makueni County and Kitui Municipality follow with six each, followed by Macha­kos Municipality and Matuu Town Council with five each. Mavoko and Mwingi Town Coun­cil have 3 com­pliant councilors each while Makueni Town and Kangundo Town Council have 2 each. No one has made returns from Mtito-Andei Town Council.

Separately, Pastors have made an appeal to be included in the trip. Sources say that a group of churchmen have met Mr Mwau and he had in­di­cated that he would consider their request to be included in the much touted trip to Dubai which will also in­clude about 10 journalists and other professionals. The date of the trip remains a much guarded secret.