Kenyan MPs Fly To Dubai To Attend A Virtual Meeting

By Clinton Ochieng

Kenya is an interesting country with funny leaders. Can you imagine, Kenyan MPs flew all the way to Dubai to attend a training that was supposed to be virtual? Is that we have money or we have foolish leaders?

Coming at a time when Kenya is combatting the third wave of Covid-19 pandemic during a fragile economy, the MPs decided to take a trip to Dubai in UAE for training on public finance.

The benchmarking trip by legislators to the United Arab Emirates has caused mixed reactions from the public. The wrongly timed trip had the MPs leave last Thursday and are expected back in the country on Saturday.

According to government regulations, legislators and top State officials are entitled to fly business class on any flight that lasts over four hours.

A flight from Nairobi to Dubai takes about five and a half hours. This means that for instance, a return ticket to Dubai on the business class would cost 125,000 shillings which is according to Kenya airways billing. This translates to about 2 million shillings on air tickets for the legislators.

Read More:

• Flying To Dubai With Summer Surprises As Emirates Resumes
• 2021 Will Be A Recovery Year For Most Economies

It is estimated that each MP will get about 1.28 million shillings given that they receive an allowance of 143,000 shillings per day. This would sum up to over a 20.5million shillings in allowances for the 16 MPs who went to Dubai.

Nyali MP Mohamed Ali said MPs are always being blamed for not performing their oversight role effectively, and the first thing that comes to mind about the trip to build capacity, is that they are wasteful.

“Dubai-based Zoe Talent Solutions is hosting this training and the leader of the Leader of Minority John Mbadi is leading the delegation,” said Michael Sialai the National assembly clerk.

Zoe Talent Solutions bills itself as a global training and consulting firm that has been serving leading businesses in many countries. Its head office is in Dubai and it has another one in London.

It also has training venues in Nairobi, Accra, Cairo, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kigali, Dar-es-Salaam, Windhoek, and Lagos.

Which begs the question as to why the MPs couldn’t attend the benchmarking in the Nairobi office through any online avenue so as to save money from the trip which could be put to use to benefit the currently struggling Kenyan citizens due to the coronavirus.