A Kenyan Member of Parliament (MP) is compensated to the tune of Kshs750,000 (approximately $10,000) a month. This includes mileage, entertainment allowance, extraneous allowance, house allowance and monthly car maintenance. If you are a vice-president, minister, assistant minister or parliamentary service commission member, add another Kshs 300,000.

Note that the current parliament, 10th Parliament, has 207 sworn MP’s!

The 10th parliament MP’s did not start work until march 6th,2008 and in case you were wondering, yes they got paid for the month of January and February. Ok so they worked one day in January when they elected the speaker and his deputy but that is it! Shortly after President Kibaki prorogued parliament until March! So why did they get paid for February? Why didn’t they get a pro-rate for the month of January?

I think part of the problem is that MP’s determine their own pay. So every time there is a new parliament, the first order of business is to up salaries. The 9th parliament gave themselves a Kshs1.4 billion gratuity in addition to an existing pension despite a huge protest from wananchi. The MP’s in that session - 222.

Perharps this demand to have the MP’s salaries drastically reduced through this petition will finally send the message home.