From left: Simon Gicharu, Geothermal Development Company; Fred Kapondi, Kenya Post Office Savings Bank and Matu Wamae, New Kenya Co-operative Creameries. FILE
By MUGAMBI MUTEGI and DAVID HERBLING
IN SUMMARY
Some nominees do not meet requirements set by State House-backed task force.
The task force had argued that a postgraduate degree as well as the requirement that the appointees must have 10-years experience in top management and served at least five years as a board member, was key to reviving the State firms.
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Uhuru appointments reverse grand parastatal reform plan
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s recent appointment of 36 people to chair the boards of parastatals went against the recommendations of a task force he named to set the State agencies on a new path, casting doubts on his commitment to reforms.
At the core of the rising doubts over Mr Kenyatta’s commitment to reforms is his decision to make the board appointments, contrary to the task force’s advice that he removes himself from the process.
The team of professionals, led by former Mandera Central MP Abdikadir Mohamed and banker Isaac Awuondo, had advised that the President ceases to make the appointments because “once appointed politically, a director’s loyalty is to the appointing authority and not to the corporation.”
It has not helped that some of the timelines outlined in the report – which the President said would be implemented in three months (meaning by February 2014) – have lapsed.
Political pressure appears to have forced Mr Kenyatta to ignore the task force’s advice, choosing instead to reward his and Deputy President William Ruto’s political allies, including those who lost in the March 4 General Election.
The appointments have seen former Cabinet minister Samuel Poghisio, former Civil Service head Francis Muthaura, and former assistant minister Danson Mungatana return to public service.
As the law stands, the President and Cabinet Secretaries enjoy sweeping powers over the appointment of directors of State-owned firms, inviting intense political lobbying for the jobs.
Key among the many contradictions that President Kenyatta’s latest move has occasioned against the parastatals reform agenda is the fact that at least a third of the people he appointed to chair the 16 commercial-oriented State firms do not have Masters’ degrees as recommended by the task force.
READ: More than half of directors face exit in parastatal reforms
The task force had argued that a postgraduate degree as well as the requirement that the appointees must have 10-years experience in top management and served at least five years as a board member, was key to reviving the State firms.
Chief executives of the State firms are expected to hold a Masters degree while board members are required to have a Bachelors’ degree besides having served in a senior management position for a period of not less than six years.
“There is no minimum qualification requirement for being appointed to a board of a State corporation and consequently there are cases where functional illiterates have been appointed as board members,” the task force said in the report.
The list of Mr Kenyatta’s appointees who do not meet the minimum requirements set in the task force’s report includes Mount Kenya University founder Simon Gicharu, the new chair of Geothermal Development Company (GDC).
Mr Gicharu is a Bachelor of Education graduate from Kenyatta University and undertook a three-month enterprise development course at Cranfield University in the UK.
The list also includes Matu Wamae, who was reappointed to chair New Kenya Co-operative Creameries’ board and former Mt Elgon MP Fred Kapondi, who is the new chair of the Kenya Post Office Savings Bank board.
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