Kenyan billionaire Vimal Shah has recommended that MCAs should not be paid a salary but rather they should volunteer their services.
He was speaking on Friday at the Senate speaker’s roundtable at Leisure lodge in Kwale county when he shared his thoughts with the legislators.
The chairman of Bidco Africa told the gathering that the size of government should be slashed noting that the huge representation was slowing down economic growth.
“Everybody’s salary is begged on GDP growth. The size of the pie is not growing, we have the human capital and opportunities all we need to do is to reduce the recurrent budget,” Shah noted.
Currently, each of the over 2,000 MCAs takes home a basic salary of Kshs165,000 from an earlier Kshs144,000.
The latter had been recommended by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) before the MCAs moved to court to reverse the decision.
The government uses over Kshs600 billion to pay salaries and wages and is expected to rise if Parliament passes the gender Bill.
Shah also called on the government to do away with market controls saying a liberal market would spur economic growth in the country.
He cited the fuel and maize prices and well as commercial banks interest rates which he said should be left to the market factors to determine.
The industrialist decried double taxation by the two levels of Governments and the tedious process of getting approvals in the counties as some of the challenges facing the private sector.
