Reports Leo Odera Omolo In Kismu City.

The Muhoroni parliamentary contest in the next general election has received another high profile aspirant whose candidature seemed to have jolted the incumbent mp like thunderbolt.

The new entrant into Muhoroni political derby is Agwenge Mbech, the 41 year-old former IT manager with the BP Shell Oil firm in Houston Texas in the US for many years. He is the holder of a BA and Maters degrees in IT engineering technology majoring in business management discipline.

photo of Mr Agwenge Mbeche who is the latest entrant into contest for the Muhoron parliamentary seat whose incumbent is Prof/ Ayicheo Olueny. The 41 year old IT engineer has lived and worked in the USA for 17 years;

Mbeche who is commonly known in Muhoroni constituency as “Nyarombo Maler’ {meaning the cleanest sacrificing lamp} untainted with any scandals and scams, which have been bedeviling the rich sugar producing constituency one after the other for decades.

Muhoroni constituency is the home of the four white sugar factories in a district within Kisumu County in an area classified as the Nyanza Sugar Belt. Mbeche has lived and worked I the US for close to 17 years during each period of time, he used to return home in Kenya almost every year for a total of 15.He owns a large scale sugar cane in Koru within Muhoroni district where his family lived, though the family is originally hails from Kamagaga sub-clan in the North East Kano location near Ahero Rice Scheme.

What has sent shock-waves to the spine of the other contestants in the same constituency is the fact that Mbeche has been a strong supporter of the ODM in the diaspora, particularly in the US where he is known to have previously hosted the party leader and the Prime Minister of Kenya Raila Amolo Odinga during his numerous tours of the US.

Mbeche is also believed to have been the instrumental tool for the ODM fundraising in the US amongst the Kenyan living there.

Apart fro the incumbent MP Prof Ayiecho Olueny, Mbeche would be facing another equally populist aspirant in the name of the flamboyant Nairobi based businessman James Onyango K’oyoo who according to reports emerging fro the agriculturally rich constituency. This time around K’oyoo is said to have already made major inroad into the area and is expected to give the other aspirants the run for their money.

The soft-spoken and well mannered technocrat is the so of the late Mr Aloys Mbeche Oyuko who had served the City Council of Nairobi as its Deputy Treasurer for many years.

The four sugar milling factories, which re located within the Muhoroni constituency including the Miwani Sugar Mills {which is currently under the official receivership and closed down}. The Muhoroni Sugar Mills Company, which is still in operating, but also has been under the protective joint official receivership management for close to a decade.

The Chemelil Sugar Company, which is reported to be on his death-bed and on the verge of collapsing and could be the next to go burst unless the government through the Kenya Sugar Board come to its rescue.

Speaking during an exclusive, but brief interview with this writer in Kisumu City, Mbeche said that pat of his mission and desired to be the next Muhoron MP is that he wanted to empower both the youth and the women.

Mbeche said he was shocked to learn that despite the Kenyan parliament having discussed and approved the payment of the elderly people, the elders in Muhoron have yet to benefited from such payment. The same parliament has deliberated on payment to the widow whose family were marooned by the scourge of HIV/Aids deaths in the region where the epidemic is so rampant, leaving them to fend for their siblings. The widows in Muhoroni have yet to benefit from the funds, though in other areas have enjoyed he same. All these happening are due to the indebtedness and neglect of the political leadership in the area.

He said the residents of the constituency have quite often been heard saying,”We are faced with leadership crisis cross-cutting many sectors be it in corporate institutions political ,community and even religion .

He went on, “It is widely acknowledged fact that the effectiveness of the institutions of governance depend largely on the said political leadership,’ said Mbeche.

The aspirant said that he believes in good leadership that is influenced by vision, principles, beliefs and deeds as opposed to what “we normally see in our Muhoroni constituency today that a whole baggage of filth from selfishness, dishonesty, intransigence, deception, aloofness to lack ideology, hence political thuggery and vindictiveness sold to the people for a vote.

He went on, “This is what ha become of our good and rich constituency which he people must decide to vote out for progressive change. The result is for everyone to see, increase in poverty in rich constituency, high index of poverty. High index of school drop outs yet we have devolved funds from people’s taxes in the form of CDF and school bursary scheme and increased drop on socio-economic fabric that hold out families together making Muhoroni a poor shadow of itself.”

Mbeche said it is for this reasons why he s offering his candidature for Muhoroni by asking the electorate to bring in the meaningful change, adding that lack of political accountability in the utility of the public resources in Muhoroni constituency has adversely affected the socio-economic development in the area,

The aspirant said this has to increased poverty and entitlement without focus on the needs of the constituents. He said if elected the next MP fore Muhoroni he will be committed to offer the difference of leadership the constituency had been lacking for several decades.

My tenure of office an MP will adhere to fiscal discipline in the utility that greatly include the 18 devolved funds at constituency level. This means therefore that the next elected MP should offer leadership and accountability on;LATIF, CDF, Bursary,Roads Levy Fund, HIV/Aids Fund, Water Fund, Women Fund Youth Fund and man others which currently the public has seen a lot of wastage, ostentatious spending and mismanagement by the officials and the committee members put to facilitate equitable use of the fund.

Mbeche is married with three children. He has produced a wonderful personal manifesto showing how he will tackles the myriads of problems facing Muhoroni district which he said is the bastion of major food production apart from the sugar factories and sugar cane farming. But he then regretted that youth in the area have suffered the worse of unemployment due to mismanagement in the sugar mills.

Ends