Former Kakamega Senator Boni Khalwale has poked holes into the directive by Central Bank of Kenya to phase out Sh1,000 notes, arguing that they are still being issued in banks.
On Saturday, Central Bank Governor Patrick Njoroge said the current Sh1,000 notes will be phased out by October 1st, adding that Kenyans should start surrendering them.
“To deal conclusively with these concerns, the older Sh1,000 series shall be withdrawn. By a Gazette Notice dated May 31, 2019, all persons have until October 1, 2019, to exchange those notes, after which the older Sh1,000 will cease to be legal tender," he said as quoted by the Nation.
But on Monday, Khalwale said that he was given the old notes in Kakamega Cooperative Bank despite the directive by the CBK boss.
"Am at the Kakamega branch of Cooperative Bank of Kenya. They have just paid me in the 1000 shilling denomination that Kenyans were ordered to surrender! CBK must stop this contradictions! Otherwise revert to the international best practices of currency replacement," he tweeted.
On Monday, EALA MP Simon Mbugua moved to court seeking to have the directive revoked, arguing that Kenyans were not involved when CBK was printing the new notes.
"The directive is in violation of the constitution and the Central Bank Act," the petition read in parts as quoted by the Standard.
Senate Minority Leader James Orengo has also weighed into the printing of new currency, claiming that the move was unconstitutional.
As a lawyer, I have to say this, the new notes are unconstitutional because there is the portrait of the Mzee Jomo Kenyatta,” Orengo said while addressing a gathering in Migori County.
“It is not bad to use KICC Building, but let them use the side without any portrait,” he added.