That's quite an outrageously high figure considering the average farm worker makes around $38 per month and city workers around $75. Imagine what happens when the lobbyists are introduced. The Guardian:
After resisting calls to pay income tax for years, MPs finally agreed yesterday night to pay the tax, but only after giving themselves a sweetener of 240,000 shillings (£1,960) taking their monthly pay to 1,091,000 shillings (£8,920).
The news was greeted with anger in Kenya, where the minimum wage was last month raised to £50 a month for employees in cities and £25 for farm workers. Since 2003, when President Mwai Kibaki came to power, politicians have become notorious for regularly increasing their salaries. British MPs earn £5,478 a month, while a member of France's national assembly have a monthly salary of £4,260.
"Yet another drastic pay hike for MPs … is the most outrageous, insensitive, immoral and intolerant abuse and impunity by Kenya's officialdom the country has ever witnessed," said the Kenya Alliance of Resident Associations.
On Wednesday, MPs voted to adopt the report of former appeal court judge Akilano Akiwumi, who led a review of politicians' salaries in the wake of public dissatisfaction. MPs' exemption from tax on all but a fraction of their total pay – their effective tax rate is 5% – was a source of particular resentment.
