Kenyan members of Parliament and other politicians must be on top of the world’s luckiest politicians owing to the tendency by their humble constituents attending every function and rallies they invite them, no matter how meaningless they are.
In a normal Kenyan setting, most MPs, governors, and senators spend millions of taxpayers’ money on meager projects then attract all media attention during their heavily-funded launching, commissioning and tape-cutting.
Now that politicians are keenly eyeing re-election in the next year’s general election, a majority have been on a spending spree, channelling hefty amounts of public funds to unnecessary projects to earn public sympathy come election date.
Nakuru County has fallen victim of this following several instances where politicians have spend huge sums of money building toilets, erecting electricity poles, going for benchmarking trips abroad, constructing footbridges among others, with most funds being unaccounted for upon completion.
Members of the public then close their businesses; put on hold their schedules to attend the most hyped event-launching and tape-cutting.
They forget that this is their money working, and the politician in question is simply their employee who they sent to Parliament as their office, to work for them.
If you thought these politicians are doing you a favour by bringing development closer home, they are simply doing what they were elected to do.
Independent auditing should be done often to account for the spending especially by MPs on Constituency Development Fund, which mostly ends up in their individual or cronies pockets.
Exaggerared funding on small projects such as foot bridge which cost Sh4.1 million as witnessed in one of the constituencies in Kisumu should be thoroughly investigated to curb wastage.