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Citizen Weekly

Wednesday 25 March 2015

PARASTATAL HEADS TO BE HIRED AFRESH

NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 25 – President Uhuru Kenyatta has signed an executive order requiring all parastatal board members to be recruited using criteria set out in a new code of governance for State corporations titled Mwongozo.
The criteria is meant to address the problem of bloated parastatal boards, ensure efficient running of State corporations and to avoid conflict of interests where board members bid for tenders in their own corporations.
State House Spokesperson Manoah Esipisu on Wednesday said all existing parastatal board vacancies would now be filled using this criteria which also seeks to avoid overlapping in the roles of parastatal CEOs and board secretaries.
“It gives criteria for appointments and reappointments to boards as well as removals, rewards and sanctions and performance management,” Esipisu said.
The newly adopted criteria for parastatal board appointments requires that they be composed of between seven and nine members at least one member be an expert in financial management.
“Meaning that he or she is a bona-fide member of a professional body regulating the accountancy profession,” the guidelines stipulate.
The guidelines also require that at least a third of the board members be “independent” meaning they neither work for the national nor county governments and are not suppliers of the state corporation to which they’ve been appointed.
The board members are to serve for terms no longer than six years should they be re-appointed and three should they not.
The new guidelines for State corporation governance were presented to President Uhuru Kenyatta on Wednesday by the committee formed to implement the recommendations of the Presidential Taskforce on Parastatal Reform.
President Kenyatta also signed a legal notice, on the recommendation of the committee, transferring the regulatory function of the Kenya Film Commission to the Film Classification Board, “leaving the KFC to focus on promotion and development,” Esipisu said.
He also addressed the subject of food security at a press briefing on Wednesday saying that the government had imported adequate reserves following insufficient rain in the second half of 2014.
On the subject of the continued training of British soldiers in Kenya, he simply said that the matter was discussed during the British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond’s visit to Kenya and was still under discussion.

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