Kenya: MPs fanning poverty, says study

from Somalinet

By David Odoki

Kenyan Members of Parliament are driving Kenyans into abject poverty through their firm hold on development resources, a new study reveals.

They have perpetuated the culture of handouts and perfected the art of keeping ordinary Kenyans in ignorance to continue holding their positions.

They have driven majority of the population into dependency and created structures - from the national level down to the village - of maintaining the pattern.

The report, Political Patronage, Access to Entitlements and Poverty in Kenya, warns that unless MPs are edged from the control and determination of how resources are allocated, the levels of poverty would remain high.

The report was funded by the Kenya Episcopal Conference, the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission and the Dan Church Aid, comes hot on the heels of a similar study by the United Nations Development Programme mission in Kenya, which cautioned that the gap between the rich and the poor was widening.

The launch of the report, at Jacaranda Hotel in Nairobi Kenya, was attended by the chairman of the Episcopal conference, Bishop Peter Kairo, his deputy, Archbishop Zaccheaus Okoth, and Dan Church Aid's Gopika Dass Elmegaard.-(The East African)