PM attacks new pay deal for MPs

Published on Sunday 4 July 2010 15:46

HOURS after Kenya's prime minister was discharged from the hospital following a brain procedure, he denounced a move by MPs to approve for themselves a $175,000 annual pay package.

MPs last week voted to adopt the recommendation of a pay committee to increase their salary and allowances and pay tax on their income for the first time.

With the new taxes in place, the proposed increase in members' take-home pay would be relatively small - about $1,500 a month. But the media and public have been scathing in their condemnation of the move.

"Without mincing words, I am totally against the idea of MPs adding salaries to themselves arbitrarily," prime minister Rail Odinga told journalists during his first news conference yesterday since being hospitalised.

"It is unfair. It is sending very wrong signals to the people of this country, at a time when the economy of this country is going through very great strains."

Odinga spoke just hours after he was discharged from the hospital where he had spent six days after doctors drilled a hole in his head to drain fluids that were putting pressure on his brain.