The newly elected Members of Parliament have planned to initiate a process of disbanding the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) after its decision to scrap sitting allowances in plenary sessions.
The MPs led by Tim Wanyonyi have pointed out an overstepping by the SRC as they ask the Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC) to challenge the decision made by the commission in terms of pay cuts.
“We will not sit and watch the SRC take away what we enjoyed in the last Parliament. We will ask the Parliamentary Service Commission to challenge the gazette notice failing which we will embark on a process to disband the SRC,” Tim Wanyonyi, the third-term MP for Westlands, said at the start of a two-day orientation for newly elected lawmakers.
SRC is said to have scrapped sitting allowances of the representatives with an intention of saving the taxpayers up to one billion yearly as gazette last month.
Since the MPs earned about Sh5,000 for every sitting and the abolishment of the allowances for plenary sessions in the National Assembly and Senate is meant to ease the pressure on the public sector wage bill which is currently at Sh930.5 billion annually.
With the scrapping of sitting allowances set to start operation on September 9th after the MPs elect have been sworn in, SRC urged the committee to be contented with the increased salary by kshs 134, 000 making their pay kshs 710,000.
Clashes between the MPs and the SRC have in the past been witnessed as the commission sought to slash huge benefits from MPs’ earlier pay before the constitution’s enactment.
In the recent past, the leaders have called for the disbandment of the Salaries Remuneration Committee to no avail as it’s a constitutional body that can only be scrapped through an amendment of the Constitution.
According to the law, scrapping the commission will entail Parliament raising a two-thirds majority, 233 of the 349 MPs to disband the commission.
