Port boss must be from Coast, MPs

• MPs threaten to mobilise residents to ground operations at the port if demands are ignored.
• MPs argue that since the port is located at the Coast, it should be managed by a local person.
• Malindi Mp warns PM that he risks losing political support from the region.
  

Coast MPs have dug in their heels on the controversy over who should become the next managing director of Kenya Ports Authority, vowing that only someone from the region would do.

And if their demands were not met, they would mobilise residents to ground operations at the port, said the MPs.

“We will block ships from entering the port to deliver cargo. We will ground all the operations with the people,” warned Mr Gideon Mung’aro, the assistant chairman of the Coast Parliamentary Group (CPG).

The debate has been raging ever since Mr Abdallah Mwaruwa was last week sent on compulsory leave.

Mr Mung’aro, the MP for Malindi, told journalists in the town on Wednesday that the position left vacant “should be filled by another Coast person”.

The matter has put the CPG and Prime Minister Raila Odinga on a collision course, with the MPs arguing that since the port was located at the Coast, it should be managed by a local person.

Cheap politics

But Mr Odinga, speaking in Mombasa last Sunday, dismissed the MPs’ demands as “cheap politics”.

He said a qualified person, regardless of where they came from, would be hired to run the port, because it was national property.

“If a Coast person is MD and he messes up Kenya Ports Authority, the whole country suffers. If the MD is from upcountry and fails to deliver, the country equally suffers,” said Mr Odinga during the homecoming party of Changamwe MP Ramadhan Kajembe.

However, Mr Mung’aro said the CPG would defend its position.

And if the PM did not like it, he risked losing political support from the region, warned Mr Mung’aro.

“But our message is that we will not accept anyone from outside the Coast as MD because we have enough qualified people around. We in the Coast have been oppressed for many years and we will not give in this time round,” he said.