Treasury blocks bid to increase MPs’ pension

Former Members of Parliament (MPs) will not enjoy an increment in their pensions after the National Treasury rejected a Bill seeking to raise pension to Sh100,000 per month.

Treasury says increasing the pensions will burden the already overstretched exchequer as the country grapples with an underperforming economy.

Pensions Secretary Alfred Kagika told the National Assembly’s Finance and National Planning Committee the enactment of the Bill will work against efforts by the government to manage the public wage bill in a sustainable manner.

Kagika said the reintroduction of the Parliamentary Pensions (Amendment) Bill, 2023 which seeks to increase the pension of former MPs who served between July 1, 1985, to January 1, 2001, will result in more problems than solutions.

The Bill, sponsored by Sirisia MP John Waluke seeks to increase the pension paid to former MPs from the current Sh33,000 per month to Sh100,000.

During yesterday’s sitting, Waluke tabled a bank slip showing that the lowest pension paid to a former MP who served two terms until 2002 is a merger Sh7,084 per month.

“The amendment to the Parliamentary Pensions Act will embolden other categories of public servants who feel that their pension is inadequate to agitate for similar treatment which would exponentially increase the pensions burden on the exchequer,” said Kagika.

He told the committee that the model would work against efforts by the government to manage the public wage bill in a sustainable manner.”

The National Treasury, instead offered an alternative method which adjusts the pension for MPs by five percent per year to cushion the benefits from erosion by inflation. This is the third time that the Treasury has rejected the Bill that has been revived after two previous attempts were vetoed by former President Uhuru Kenyatta.