Monday, April 5: Tangatanga MPs issued six demands to the government urging it to look into the issues which they termed as a high priority.
Among the issues stipulated include:
i) The government to offer stipends of at least Ksh3,500 per month household to 4 million households in the country.
ii) Finance a mass testing and vaccination campaign by allocating a minimum of Ksh50 billion from the defence budget and the ministry of interior.
iii) To finance the interest waiver and business loan support to affected businesses, they proposed an incentive tax relief for banks and other financial institutions that would waive such interest to affected businesses in their 2020/21 tax returns coupled with the recently procured IMF loan.
iv) The disbursement of IMF Loan to be directed to the acquisition of vaccines in an open, cartel-free manner.
v) IMF funds be directed to supporting businesses from the bottom of the pyramid in order to achieve the objective of building the economy from the bottom up.
vi) The government to expand the tax base by bringing more people to the taxpaying bracket and also supporting the most vulnerable businesses.
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Earlier in the day, the MPs allied to Deputy President William Ruto on Monday, April 5, were ejected from a hotel in Lavington, Nairobi by police officers for ostensibly going against Covid-19 measures instituted by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Reports indicate that the Tangatanga members were scheduled to give a state of the nation address focusing on the debt crisis and the lockdown containment measures.
Former State House operative Dennis Itumbi complained that the meeting was canceled despite the MPs issuing a prior notice to the police.
Itumbi said that the presser would be held at the roadside citing the issues to be addressed as high-level priority.
"The police stopped the press conference by MPs from the Disease Infected Zone (DIZ) initially scheduled to take place at The Social House, Lavington Nairobi.
"MPs and the media were ejected from the hotel. The survival and livelihood issues are a high priority - we will roll out the presser at the roadside," Itumbi stated.
The news comes as Kenyans raised concerns regarding the debt crisis after the government borrowed another Ksh255 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Kenyans online flooded IMF's social pages to protest the approval of the loan with the hashtag #stoplendingKenya trending on Sunday and Monday.
Currently, Kenya's debt stands at Ksh7.06 trillion which is equivalent to 65 percent of the Gross Domestic Product.
Further, a section of Kenyans and politicians have also raised concerns regarding the Covid-19 directives issued by Uhuru who instituted a lockdown in five counties (Nairobi, Nakuru, Machakos, Kajiado and Kiambu) terming the counties as red zones.
