Kenya mission in Ireland should be 'closed down'

Parliament’s Defence and Foreign Relations Committee has proposed that Kenya’s mission in Ireland should be “closed down”.

The lawmakers said that the mission in Dublin “does not serve any significant diplomatic and economic purpose”.

The mission, with a yet-to-be-approved budget of Sh106 million, will miss out on the allocations in the next financial year because the MPs are categorical that the money should go into opening a new consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The MPs said that because of the complaints of mistreatment of Kenyans, many of them employed in Saudi Arabia as househelps, there was a need to “take services closer to the Kenyans many of them working or living in Saudi Arabia”.

The severing of diplomatic ties with Ireland in favour of Saudi Arabia, the MPs added, was because Ireland was no longer a lucrative political or economic hub. Instead, they said, the State ought to join hands with the Saudi’s because Jeddah is “one of the largest economic and commercial centres in the world".

The MPs have also recommended that Sh470 million of the money from NSIS be used as allowances for staff in Kenya’s foreign missions. The committee also want Sh450 million for a chancery building in Kampala, Uganda. The Treasury had earmarked Sh2 million for this.

Uganda’s is Kenya’s highest trading partner.

The Committee has also proposed Sh800 million for the purchase of a chancery in New York, USA, the home of the United Nations. Looking at South Sudan, and the MPs have recommended Sh170 million for a mission in Juba, saying that it is crucial for Kenya to “recognise Juba’s economic potential”.

The chairman of the committee, Adan Keynan, also fulfilled his threat to punish the spymaster for ignoring committee meetings.

Mr Keynan’s team got even with the National Security Intelligence Service as it slashed the budget of the crucial body by a massive Sh2.8 billion. The MPs said the spy agency had gotten the money in the last budget for “modernisation” and that it was not expected that the said modernisation would “be funded in perpetuity”.

The committee has been having an icy relationship with the spymaster Michael Gichangi, who has skipped the committee’s meetings over the controversial dossier that alleges that President Kibaki is under investigation by the British government for his role in the post-election violence. The UK has termed the dossier as a forgery.

For the first time in years, the committee did not invite the Director General of NSIS to defend his budget. This was to punish Mr Gichangi, for what the committee said was his “previous perpetual disobedience of committee summons”.

The House team wants the Sh2.8 billion from the spy agency allocated to the military, to the Ministry of East African Community and to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The MPs are of the view that the military gets Sh688 million to build “single-accommodation” housing units for 10,000 “junior officers”. The MPs argue that it is this shortage that made the military to freeze recruitment in the last financial year.

“This situation is not tenable in the long run as it will end up compromising national security,” the committee noted in its report. The military, the MPs added, is set to recruit in the 2012-2013 financial year.

The full budget for the housing units is Sh7.2 billion, and the government wants to build them through “offshore borrowing”.

The re-allocation to the East African Community is Sh240 million “to cater for the deficit to EAC subscriptions that arose from depreciation of the Kenya shilling” and also some Sh100 million for Kenya’s role at the helm of the regional bloc.

The report will be tabled in Parliament and if approved without amendments, the Treasury will be obligated to go as per the House directions.