To save CA from bullies, restore its autonomy and independence

State Department of Broadcasting and Telecommunications Principal Secretary Sammy Itemere in this picture taken on October 2, 2017. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Surely, somebody must be made to answer for those letters.
  • This is the sector that gave Kenya global leadership in mobile banking.

It seems that the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology sees and treats the Communications Authority of Kenya (CK) not as an autonomous and independent body but an appendage that must play to the whims of the minister and the principal secretary.

The Cabinet secretary and the PS also treat the CA as some source of inexhaustible largesse — a place where you get free money to purchase airline tickets for ministers and PSs travelling with their personal assistants to attend feel-good trips abroad.

This is the inescapable conclusion you will arrive at after reading the so-called ‘Itemere missives’ that were widely published in the daily newspapers on Sunday.

MONEY

In the letters, we saw how the PS in the ministry, Mr Sammy Itemere, routinely demanded money from the CA to pay for virtually everything under the sky — including overseas trips for the CS and himself and all manner of questionable expenditures.

Clearly, the principle of an autonomous regulator insulated from medley bureaucrats is honoured more in breach than in practice.

Surely, somebody must be made to answer for those letters because they amount to grotesque breaches of public financial management laws and practices.

Why should public levies collected from consumers of telecommunications services be squandered in sponsoring state functions and all manner of junkets?

Mark you, the CA is supposed to run a universal service fund to cushion the low-income segments of the market and offer the poor services which profit-seeking operators are not able to provide unless there is a subsidy.

Is it not an outrage that, instead of pressing the CA to spend the huge surpluses on the poor, the ministry prefers to ask for money to pay hefty per diem allowances to personal assistants on junket trips to China?

BULLYING

The Itemere letters have exposed the CA as a politically manipulable entity vulnerable to bullying by the ministry.

And there are major policy implications. We must take urgent steps to restore the autonomy and independence of the CA.

One of the reasons why the governance of this critical authority is in the mess it is in is the fact that its board is packed with just too many civil servants and bureaucrats with little knowledge and experience in regulation of our rapidly growing and expanding telecoms sector.

Three PSs — or their representatives — sit on the board as ex-officio members, representing the National Treasury and the ministries of ICT and the Interior.

This arrangement raises serious issues of conflict of interest because PSs should, ideally, be at a distance from the regulator, only providing general policy oversight and direction.

What we have is a situation where the PS sits on the board and participates in all decisions made by directors and management, only to make an about-turn and demand disciplinary action against the managers for the very resolutions!

REGULATOR

These people should be told that it is not possible to steer a boat and row it at the same time.

When you stuff PSs on the board of an independent regulator, you make it impossible for the agency to make free and fair decisions.

We must amend the law to reduce the number of ex-officio members of the CA board.

The Uganda Communications Commission only has one ex-officio member on its board. In Tanzania, the board of Tanzania Regulatory Communications Commission neither has a minister or PS.

Although the minister is the appointing authority, board members are selected by a nominations committee, in which the private sector has equal representation with the government.

MOBILE BANKING

But in terms of fostering and entrenching independence, the South Africans would appear to have superior framework.

There, directors can only be removed from office by Parliament.

The telecoms sector is critically important for us. It is the biggest taxpayer. This is the only sector that counts more than 90 per cent of the adult population as its customers — a feat that even banks cannot claim to have achieved.

This is the sector that gave Kenya global leadership in mobile banking.

We insist on treating the sector’s regulator as just another parastatal in whose board we can dump failed politicians and bureaucrats who have no clue about the industry’s challenges.

The ICT ministry must be sanctioned for treating the CA so badly.