Mama Ngina Salary: It has now emerged that taxpayers have been paying mama Ngina Kenyatta a salary of over Sh. 500,000 every month.
According to a report that appeared in the Business Daily on Friday, Mama Ngina has been getting a Sh568,218 tax-free monthly salary – courtesy of the taxpayer.
How poverty led Kenyan to hide, fall from KQ’s landing gear in London sky
Mama Ngina earns fifty percent of the pension that Mzee Kenyatta would earn if he were alive. The salary is also exempted from tax in line with the Presidential Retirement Benefits Acts of 2003.
The salary has been getting into Mama Ngina’s account amidst debate on whether she is actually entitled to it.
Apparently, the former first lady’s monthly payment was made in her capacity as a surviving spouse to founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta who passed on in 1978. When Mzee Kenyatta died in 1978, there was no existing law on the pension and benefits that his spouse would be entitled to.
in 2003, Parliament enacted the Presidential Retirement Benefits Act which established a legal framework for payment of pensions to former Presidents and their surviving spouses. “Upon the death of a serving President or of a retired President who is in receipt of or who is entitled to a pension under this Act, his surviving spouse shall be entitled to benefits amounting to fifty per cent of such pension,” the Act reads in part.
The revelation is set to further accelerate criticism that the Kenyatta family has gained the most from the Uhuru presidency even though the general economy in the country is deteriorating at an alarming rate.