House team now summons KAA chairman

Parliament’s Transport Committee has now summoned the Kenya Airports Authority board chairman Martin Wambora for disrespecting the House.

Mr Wambora will appear before the committee next week, the very week the Transport Committee report is set to table the KAA report.

Addressing a news conference on the sidelines of a constitution-making workshop in Nairobi’s Kenya Institute of Administration, the committee chairman, Mr David Were (Matungu, ODM) said Mr Wambora had exhibited disrespect to the National Assembly.

“He appeared before us, had all the time to raise the issues he raised in the media, but now he has defied the House,” Mr Were said.

The issue between KAA and the House team is the recruitment process for the parastatal's next managing director. While the KAA board chairman claims the process was transparent and fair, the House team has termed it as flawed and seemingly engineered to favour a particular candidate.

“Our problem is with the process, we have no issues with whoever is in the shortlist…and that’s why we said the process had to be done afresh,” Mr Were said. “We’ve received complaints from the ombudsman, the public and the Human Rights groups saying the process was skewed, and we have evidence to that effect.”

“Everyone has to be given a chance in the running of such huge public utilities like KAA and our work is to ensure that is done, but this process was rushed and locked out many people,” said the committee chairman.

Mr Wambora met the parliamentary committee on Tuesday where he was faced with a barrage of claims on the flawed nature of appointment process. A day later (Wednesday) he addressed his own media conference where he insisted that the hiring process was witnessed by officials from the Inspectorate of State Corporation.

Wambora claimed that the President and Prime Minister Raila Odinga backed the three short-listed candidates. The three are due for appointment any time now –as soon as the President appoints a substantive minister of Transport.

The tenure of the current managing director, Mr George Muhoho, expires on April 3.

On Wednesday, Alego Usonga MP Edwin Yinda and Ainamoi’s Benjamin Lang’at (both ODM) had reckoned that KAA board, the PM and the President were all in the Executive and it was for Parliament to keep checks in the impunity of the Executive.

The House Transport Committee holds the view that the process was rushed and that a newspaper advertisement that called for applications to fill the post were placed five days to the deadline.

The recruiting agency, Manpower Ltd –which sieved the 152 initial applicants—,is also accused by the House team of bending the rules by increasing those to feature in the initial shortlist from six, to eight without a valid reason.