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Embakasi East Member of Parliament (MP) Babu Owino has responded to his Dagoretti counterpart Beatrice Elachi’s remarks regarding the appointments of Chief Administrative Secretaries (CASs).

Elachi who was speaking during an interview with K24 TV on Thursday morning caused a stir across different social media platforms after she defended the appointments of the positions which were dismissed by the High Court in July this year.

The MP who is a former CAS for Public Service and Gender claimed that the positions would increase the country’s tax base and would reduce the workload for Cabinet Secretaries (CSs) across different departments.

“I have said in fairness of the country, and delivery of service and ensuring those ministries can function in the right way you need a deputy to have a clear role. Look at our Environment CS, she will need a deputy because in most meetings she is out of the country. She has to go because she is supposed to give our stand as Kenya and what we want to see on issues of climate change and so you need a deputy who will follow through on other issues within the ministry,” she stated.

“Even if they get salaries they will pay taxes we are creating a larger tax base. It is a non-issue of money. This tongue of saying we don’t have money is not the right one. We cannot keep lamenting since it is not the first time.”

But in his response to Elachi at the same interview, Babu while terming Elachi’s opinion as ‘fickle thinking’ noted that the salaries meant for the CASs could create jobs for over 460,000 youths across the country.

The vocal MP pointed out that with the yearly budget quoted, the aforementioned youths could earn a salary of up to Ksh10,000 which could help sustain their livelihoods.

“Instead of employing 50 CASs at 50 million Kshs per month, we can employ 5,000 youths across the country at 10,000 Ksh. The budget of the office of the CAS is going to be 1 billion per year as per the projections made during the last time they were going to be appointed. In a month that is 4.16 billion shillings, assuming that one youth is going to be paid 10,000 shillings just to afford a basic need. If you divide the amount quoted by the 10,000 shillings you will get 416,600 youths across the nation that can be employed,” Babu said.

“So do we waste the opportunity of 416,600 youths across the nation only to employ CAS? Such frivolous, fickle thinking from the majority leader is further going to kill the hope of this nation. It is my prayer for the honourable members to jump on the side of the people. There is a time you have to leave the principal because they make mistakes,” he added.