Saboti MP Caleb Amisi (middle) and other Western Kenya leaders at a press conference outside Parliament Buildings/Courtesy
The Member of the National Assembly for Saboti Constituency, Caleb Amisi, has led a section of leaders from the Mulembe community to call for reinstatement of the Director General of the National Youth Service (NYS), Madam Matilda Pamela Sakwa.
Amisi, who was accompanied by other leaders from Western Kenya in a press conference at Parliament Buildings, said firing her from the position is gender discrimination and ethnic profiling. He said since her appointment, the service has undergone tremendous transformation.
Amisi said the trend of firing people from specific ethnic and political backgrounds and replacing them with people from specific ethnic and political affiliations should not be tolerated, calling upon National Speaker Moses Wetang’ula and Musalia Mudavadi to wake up and speak for their own.
He said the latest list of appointments to the National Assembly leadership from the government side and the Principal Secretaries nominations showed the boldest disregard for the principles of inclusivity encompassed in Article 10 of the Constitution.
Out of the 25 National Assembly Committee Chairpersons, 24 are men. Furthermore, 12 out of the 25 appointments come from the previous Rift Valley province. Some regions, like the Coast and North-Eastern areas, are not represented, while the Eastern and Nyanza regions have one representative each. Nairobi and Western regions have two representatives each, while the rest of the slots have been awarded to the former Central region.
Amisi lamented that the biggest share of the recent nomination slots for the principal secretaries have been given to the Kalenjin and Kikuyu communities, as happened with the appointments of cabinet secretaries.
The MP said there is a need for reforms in the public service to guarantee and safeguard the careers of civil servants who do not belong to the two major communities in power.
He also challenged the NCIC to act on what he termed as ethnic profiling in the public service.
Mike Musungu is a reporter at Radio Simba in Bungoma and a correspondent of Trans Nzoia County for the Western Kenya Times.
