Nairobi MCAs to finally move to renovated county assembly
Nairobi ward representatives (MCAs) will move to the refurbished county assembly before the end of August.
The chambers were recently refurbished at a cost of sh200 million and will now have a sitting capacity of 140 seats as well as modern communication facilities.
Nairobi County Assembly Clerk Jacob Ngwele said that the new-look chambers are a replica of parliament chambers.
PARLIAMENT REPLICA
“This is the first county in the country to have such a replica of the national parliament, including hiring the same designer who designed the parliamentary chambers,” said Mr Ngwele.
The County Assembly has also bought iPads for its 127 members and 20 employees at a cost of sh8.82 million in its bid cut printing costs.
Mr Ngwele said the iPads have been installed with a document management system application that will enable MCAs to digitally receive the documents related to house business.
“Reports, order papers, motions, bills, statements and Standing Orders are some of the documents the assembly prints regularly for the 127 MCAs whether present or absent,”said Mr Ngwele.
The renovation of county assembly was marred with controversy after the contractor had refused to hand it over until the debt was cleared. The executive was at the time experiencing a cash crunch.
The MCAs were expected to resume sittings from recess last week in the renovated chambers, but it was postponed after delay by the Kenya Power to give the assembly a separate meter from the executive.
POWER SHORTAGE
Speaker Alex Ole Magelo had last Friday said that the continuous power shortage at City Hall following non-payment prompted them to request Kenya power for a separate meter.
Ole Magelo said that the air condition installed at the chambers needed a continuous power supply and they could not depend on power supply via City Hall’s meter.
“We have very expensive machines installed in the new chambers and with the frequency of power shortage at the City Hall we applied for our own meter and also have a backup generator,”said Ole Magelo.
