Nairobi — Gatundu South Member of Parliament Moses Kuria now wants Senate Majority Leader Kipchumba Murkomen to resign his position for claiming that the Kimwarer and Arror dams’ report was authored by members from one community.
At a news conference on Thursday, Kuria accused Murkomen of using the dams to incite Kenyans on ethnic basis.
“I am just asking Senator Murkomen to quit as the Leader of Majority so that when he talks of his people, we can understand what he means with that. When he claims that his people are losing or being denied something we get confused because we cannot tell whether he meant the people of the community that he comes from or any other Kenyan because he is the Leader of Majority in the Senate,” Kuria said, “I keep wondering what message he was trying to send by claiming that the report was written by people from one community. I will not keep quiet and watch the country going back to 2007.”
Kuria further urged Murkomen to interrogate the report based on contents and not the people who wrote it.
He was responding to Murkomen’s criticism of the report that recommended the cancellation of Kimwarer dam construction, several weeks after Henry Rotich and his Principal Secretary Kamau Thugge were arrested and prosecuted over corruption linked to the project.
And with Murkomen castigating the report and its authors, Kuria defended them saying they are all professionals whose work “must be respected”.
“If you see the titles of those people you will appreciate their work. Some are professors, engineers and senior surveyors. If today I decided to become a professor, I would be required to go back to school for over 10 years. He should see them for the job they did and not question the report on tribal basis,” he added.
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President Uhuru Kenyatta on Wednesday terminated the construction of the controversial Sh22.2 billion Kimwarer Dam, on recommendations of the technical team that authored the report presented to him.
The Head of State, however, gave a go-ahead on the Sh28.3b Arror dam.
While reacting to Kenyatta’s decision Murkomen took to social media and accused the technical committee that recommended the cancellation of misadvising the President.
He said President Kenyatta should constitute a fresh technical committee that reflects the ethnic and regional balance that understood the needs of the people of the area.
“I urge the President to constitute a transparent team that is national in character to look at all projects in Kenya and that which will not ethnically profile some regions for discrimination,” he said.
Murkomen, who is also the Elgeyo Marakwet Senator, said he was not surprised by the cancellation which he claims was already pre-determined by the technical committee led by former Public Works Principal Secretary Paul Maringa.
