Dagoretti North MP Simba Arati has offered to advise his Kimilili counterpart Didmus Barasa following an altercation with a contractor over unpaid work.
Arati who had an altercation with Barasa in 2018 during the Kibra by-election, wondered why the legislator was directly dealing with contractors.
“He (Barasa) is a friend and when we meet, probably next week, I will teach him how to handle some of these things,” Arati told Standard.
According to Arati, a legislator should not be involved in the handling and payment of contractors unless things are done differently in Kimilili.
“We have CDF and the Project Management committees are supposed to deal with contractors, not the MP,” Arati offered.
“How do you even advertise for a contract worth millions of shillings when you do not have funds in the accounts?” he posed after it emerged that there was apparently no money allocated for the classrooms.
Blamed the MP
Arati felt that Barasa, a public officer, went overboard by assaulting the contractor who had not provoked him.
“From the clip you can see the MP is not under any attack whatsoever, he was the first to assault the man who is his voter,” he said.
Referring to the altercation he had with Barasa in Kibera by-election in 2018, Arati said:
“We tried to teach him good manners in Kibra during the by-election. It was not an assault, we were only teaching him how to behave when campaigning for a candidate in the city,” he said.
Barasa was on Friday captured on video slapping Stephen Masinde, a contractor, at Baptist Lurare Primary School as members of the public watched in disbelief.
The classrooms were locked
Barasa is said to have arrived at the school to launch five classes that had been constructed by the National Government Constituency Development Fund.
The lawmaker found the classes locked with the contractor claiming that he had not yet been paid for the project.
The contractor argued that since his team completed the project, the MP has been dodgy with the payment.
“When we asked the MP to pay us, he said he will pay us in due course, and that we shouldn’t be worried,” said the contractor.
Denied assaulting anyone
Speaking at another function after the incident, the MP said he did not attack Masinde adding that he only approached Masinde to inform him to zip up his trouser but he took off.
“Because he is my friend, I thought he had gone for a short call and failed to zip up his trouser. I saw his trouser is unzipped and wanted to help him before he fled thinking I wanted to beat him,” said Barasa.
According to the legislator, he had tried several times to alert Masinde in a coded message of his open zip but he could not get it.