Homa Bay Assembly sittings disrupted by Power outage
Homa Bay County Assembly Speaker Julius Gaya was on Wednesday forced to temporarily halt House sitting following a power outage.
The Speaker directed the assembly takes a break until the problem that affected operations at the electronic Hansard recording was being corrected.
Power restoration lasted for about 40 minutes before normal sitting resumed.
Mr Gaya however failed to explain why a standby generator that should offer backup power could not be turned on.
A few minutes later after the sitting resumed, the House experienced the same problem.
Normally, county assemblies have a specific time they should operate.
In Homa Bay, Wednesday’s sitting begins at 9:30 am and ends at 12:30 pm.
Power outage meant the time MCAs would have taken while debating was to be shorter.
Nominated MCA Nancy Anyango asked the speaker to extend House sitting to allow all members to debate and exhaust what was presented on the floor of the House.
Earlier, MCAs had arrived at the House for their morning session.
In the order paper was the debate on a motion tabled by the committee on appointment.
Committee chairman and Majority Leader Richard Ogindo were presenting the motion on the vetting of nominees for appointment as county ministers.
The document had 10 names of nominees.
But when Mr Ogindo got to the ninth person, his presentation on the floor of the House was cut short when the assembly turned dark.
When speaking, members of the County Assembly of Homa Bay are required to speak on the microphone for their speeches to be recorded.
Without power, the sitting could not go on.
Mr Gaya had to tell members to take a break.
In a communication from Kenya Power, the utility firm said it was experiencing technical problems in some parts of the country.
“Good morning Customers. Please note we have a technical problem on our main line affecting the whole of Kisii Nyamira Migori and Homabay. Kindly be patient as restoration is ongoing and our sincere apologies please,” read a message from the utility firm.
Some MCAs took advantage of the opportunity to bond on the floor of the House.
Some took pictures with their colleagues.
Kanyamwa Kosewe MCA Nicholas Owaka and his Kanyaluo counterpart Jeff Ongoro on the other hand decided to sit on a chair that is normally reserved for the governor.
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