A section of MPs was on Monday morning kicked out of a hotel in Nairobi for allegedly going against COVID-19 containment measures.
The MPs drawn from the Disease Infected Zone and allied to DP William Ruto were evicted from The Social House in Lavington, just when they were about to issue an address on the country’s foreign debt situation and the recently-announced COVID-19 measures.
The lawmakers who included; Nakuru Senator Susan Kihika, Kikuyu MP Kimani Ichungwa and Dagoretti South MP John Kiarie, were forced to hold their press conference outside the hotel.
Kikuyu MP likened the predicament to a breach in their democratic rights, considering the fact that they had limited their presser to only three lawmakers, in strict conformity of the COVID-19 containment protocols.
“We have been kicked out of the hotel apparently after a call from the Inspector General and OCS Muthangari. We want to tell the IG that nobody should take advantage of this pandemic to convert our democracy into a police state,” Ichungwa said.
Senator Kihika called upon President Uhuru Kenyatta to start the process of re-directing the BBI referendum funds towards catering for each household in the five counties that have been placed under partial lockdown.
“We propose that the more than KSh14 billion in the BBI referendum budget be given out as monthly stipends of KSh3,500 for each household for the 4 million Kenyans within the Zoned Area,” Kihika said.
The MPs also demanded the government to fund a mass testing and vaccination exercise within the Zoned Area, drawing “KSh50 billion from the defense budget and that of the Ministry of Interior since the greater security threat we now have to fight is this pandemic.”
Furthermore, Kihika proposed that financial institutions such as banks should be offered waivers and tax reliefs. This, she says, will help the businesspersons within the locked areas salvage their hard-hit businesses.
On the recently-approved KSh235 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan, the MPs propose that the first disbursement be directed towards procuring vaccines “in an open and cartel-free system.”
Failure by the president to heed to these proposals, Kihika says, will be tantamount to “fuelling the brewing anger and desperation among the people, a situation that can only be catastrophic for our lovely nation.”