There was enough time to register 6m voters

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

19 February 2017

A few years ago, a friend sent me this puzzle: “A doctor gives you a prescription of three tablets with instructions to take one tablet every hour. How long will it take you finish the dose?” Contrary to common expectation, the answer is not three hours. Try it out practically and see!

Now suppose you were given a task to serve one person every 15minutes starting from 8am and ending at 5pm; how many people would you serve in one day? Well, the answer is 37. If you are thinking it should be 36, list times down and count them manually, this way: 8:00am, 8:15am 8:30am….4:30pm, 4:45pm, 5:00pm.

What if you were told to do this work continuously for 30 days; how many people would you serve? The answer is simple: 37 x 30 = 1,110. Of course it is unreasonable to expect that a person can work this way without taking a break, so let us allow 30 minutes rest in the morning, one hour for lunch and another 30 minutes in the afternoon.

Doing that knocks out 6 people bringing the daily count to 30 and the total in 30 days is now 900. What if there were 8,000 of you doing this work: how many people would you serve altogether? Again the answer is simple: 8,000 x 900 = 7,200,000.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am trying to wrap my head around the claim made in some quarters that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) did not allow enough time for the mass voter registration. After doing the above calculations, I conclude that there is no basis for extending the registration time.

IEBC was targeting to enlist about 6 million new voters and they put in place a system that can comfortably reach 7.2 million – 20 per cent above target. In my view, anyone who was interested in registering did so. Those who were left out simply did not want to be registered: even if the time was extended by 100 days, they still wouldn’t show up! 

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If you earn Sh10,000 and your employer gave you a 10 per cent pay rise, what would be your new salary? Simple: 10 per cent of Sh10,000 is Sh1,000, so the new pay is Sh11,000.

What if the pay rise was 50 per cent? The new salary would be Sh15,000. And if it was a 100 per cent pay rise, you would now earn Sh20,000.

Let me emphasise: if you get a 100 per cent increment on a Sh10,000 salary, your new pay becomes Sh20,000. Cleary, then, if the pay rise is 200 per cent, your income goes to Sh30,000 and if it was 300 per cent, the new amount becomes Sh40,000.

I looked at the disputed Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between doctors and the ministry of health. It proposes to increase the lowest gross pay from Sh121,910 to Sh325,730. This is about three times the initial level; that is, it is approximately a 200 per cent increment. Certainly not 300!