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Citizen Weekly

Sunday 22 February 2015

Nyamira county assembly rejects reshuffle

Nyamira county assembly has rejected the reshuffle of county executive committee members which was done by Governor John Nyagarama last week.
The county assembly implementation committee under the chair of Peter Maroro, rubbished the reshuffle which they said was meant to protect members of the executive who had mismanaged and embezzled funds allocated for various projects in their departments.
Addressing the press at the county assembly, the members asked the governor to suspend the handing over exercise until members whose departments were implicated with corrupt deals are heard and cleared as the rule of justice prescribes. 
Maroro also said that there were members of the executive who were under investigation and it was therefore improper for the governor to transfer them to other departments instead of sacking them outrightly.
The chairman further claimed that the reshuffles were also targeting individuals who were not politically connected to the governor, a scenario they vowed to resist and not succumb to.
A member of the committee Thaddeus Nyabaro wondered why the governor had failed to reshuffle members of the executive who had failed in service delivery but instead chose to retain them in senior departments with lumpsum financial allocations.
Nyabaro said that clannism had taken the centre in the reshuffle where those who hail from the region of the governor were unaffected in the changes.
They warned that if the governor could not listen to their protestation, then he should brace himself for a titanic battle from the assembly, something that if allowed, may ruin his political career.
The committee named water executive member Andrew Ombati who was transferred to the department of health and yet there were a number of issues bedeviling the department of water where he was the supremo.
The members claimed that some chief officers who did not give kickbacks to the account allegedly held by the governor were transferred to departments with little monetary allocation.
“The chief officer in charge of agriculture Thomas Sagwe was moved because he stood firm and rejected corrupt deals which were being perpetuated by a clique of the county mafia,” Maroro remarked.
 The committee questioned why the governor had not reshuffled the executive committee members like Kefa Osoro  (roads and public) and John Omanwa (finance and planning who they described as “total failures,” in execution of their mandate.
They further claimed that some junior county workers attached to the governor’s officers were part of the corruption cartels citing that many of them were putting up state of the art buildings and buying many plots in strategic towns outside the county worthy millions of shillings and yet they earn very little.
Nyabaro said the county government under the watch of Nyagarama was perpetuating corruption and as an assembly and an oversight eye of taxpayers’ money, they were determined to have him impeached this time round.
Nyamira county secretary Aori Ochana when contacted, defended the changes by the governor as he said they were within his constitutional mandate. Ochana said he had received a letter from the assembly written by the clerk Daniel Orina calling for the suspension of the handing-over exercise until the contentious issues surrounding the transfers were amicably addressed.

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