The Siaya County Assembly oversight and implementation committee chairman Leonard Oriaro has opposed the government’s move to deregister and freeze accounts of more than 525 NGOs.
Oriaro argues that this will impact negatively on the lives of many Kenyans. The leader said the move will not only render employees of the affected NGOs jobless, but also make those who were beneficiaries of their programmes quite vulnerable. He argues that NGOs have helped this country a great deal on matters of health, education, socio-economic support and on other humanitarian grounds that they did not need to be handled in such inconsiderate manner. The MCA, while addressing journalists at the Siaya County assembly grounds claimed that the government has no moral ground of scrutinising the NGOs’ accounts given the high rate of corruption in the country.
He added that the government has no authority to compel the NGOs to reveal how they spend their funds. Oriaro, who is also the County Representative for Central Alego Ward in Alego/Usonga constituency, has therefore called on members of the National Assembly to rationalise the 1992 NGOs’ coordination regulations so that they can only be accountable to their donors. The legislator who doubles up as a human rights activist, has advised that instead of frustrating the non-profit organisations, parliament should formulate proper legislations that can empower them to effectively support members of the community without duplication in their activities. The executive Director of the NGOs’ National coordination Board Fazul Mohamed struck off the NGOs’ registers and froze some of their accounts but Oriaro says that deregistering NGOs cannot be the solution to the problems affecting this country.