Photo by Irungu Mwangi/KNA.
All Kirinyaga County elected leadership should resign or let the public invoke the recall clause if both the Assembly and the Executive are not able to end the current impasse, area Deputy Governor, Peter Ndambiri has said.
Ndambiri said unless the standoff on budget was also resolved, many residents would continue being exposed to high risks of contracting coronavirus due to lack of basic medical supplies.
He told mourners at Ndindiruku village in Mwea on Saturday that he was saddened by the ‘living on an ivory tower’ syndrome by the said leaders as the people continued to suffer due to lack of drugs and medicines in all health care facilities.
“Unless the County Executive and the Assembly agree to stop their pride and come to a round table to resolve the stalemate, we are likely to end up losing so many of our people due to the lack of medical facilities at our health care institutions,” he said.
Ndambiri who was at one time accused of fanning the current crisis at the county said he was crying inwardly on learning that as of last Saturday, 20 coronavirus positive cases had been reported, a fact which did not go unnoticed by the Health Cabinet Secretary, Mutahi Kagwe on his daily Covid-19 updates to the nation.
“All I know is that as at the time the pandemic was declared, the county had only 14 beds at its Kerugoya referral hospital set aside for the coronavirus pandemic cases and am now worried that we are having more patients than the bed capacity,” he observed.
“Unless the impasse is resolved at this point in time, we will have left our people in the jaws of this crocodile called Covid-19 which continues to ravage the entire world,” Ndambiri observed.
He said it was now upon the said leadership to either shape up or resign to save the people from more sufferings due to lack of direction.
The burial ceremony was for a local women leader, Lucia Wanjiru Mugo born in 1942 who passed on a week ago after a long illness.
She was the mother to the local Kanu Deputy Organizing Secretary, Moses Waweru and Eng. David Mwaniki of the KPLC among others.
Local MCA, Gudson Muchina who also attended the ceremony, told the media that the Assembly had already passed the budget while Governor Anne Waiguru continued to accuse the MCAs of failing to do so.
“We passed the budget but Waiguru did not want to see our version after we made several amendments on the document hence the hullabaloo since she wanted to use us as rubber stamps,” he said.
The county has continued to dominate media headlines for the bad things after the Assembly unsuccessfully attempted to impeach Waiguru over alleged abuse of office among other claims.
The impeachment did not however go through after it was rejected by the Senate for lack of adequate evidence directly linking Waiguru to the alleged corruption at the county.
Undeterred, the MCAs have started collecting signatures to be presented to the IEBC for Waiguru’s recall.
By Irungu Mwangi
