This is how the CoE read 500m words in 21 days

 By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

10 January 2010

The Committee of Experts on the Constitution (CoE) received about one million submissions on the Harmonized Draft. According to the Constitution Review Act, the CoE had 21 days to read the public comments and incorporate them into the draft.

Now that was a daunting task. Indeed, I have had whispers in the grapevine to the effect that there is no way they could have finished reading all those submissions. So, let’s find out whether it was possible.

Now, the last time I wrote about this (6 December 2009), I concluded that I might not be able to complete reading the Harmonised Draft in the time allocated. My prediction came to pass and I only got as far as Chapter 14.

My submission was probably more detailed than most. It came to about six pages and 1,400 words. I suspect that most other people, especially individuals wrote about one or two pages; that is, about 500 words.

This means that the CoE had about 500 million words to read in the 21 days allow by the law. I don’t envy them! Assuming that the secretariat worked for five continuous hours per day (excluding breaks), it turns out that they were allowed only 105h to complete the task. Therefore, the team had to go through about 5 million words per hour.

Assuming further that they started on the work from the moment the first submission was sent in, we can give them another 21 days to make a total of 42. This however still works to a seemingly insurmountable 2.5 million words per hour.

Now; considering that the CoE just needed to skim through the submission, we can safely assume that the each member of the secretariat could read about 1,000 words per minute – about two submissions. This means that each reader could complete about 60,000 words per hour. So, how many people were required to complete the minimum 2.5 million words per hour?

The answer is simply 2,500,000 divided by 60,000; that is at least 42.  I don’t have the actual number of employees at the secretariat, but I suspect it is higher than this. Thus the task does not look insurmountable any more! 

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 As the President and Prime Minister go to launch the National Tree Planting Season next Friday (15th January 2010), many eyes will be glued to the sky looking out for the expected Solar Eclipse. This occurs when the moon will pass between the Sun and the Earth blocking the light and forming a large shadow on the ground.

This will be an annular eclipse meaning that the moon will not cover the sun totally, but will leave an exposed “ring” around the edge. For this reason, the coming eclipse will be especially dangerous if view with the naked eyes. Don’t look at it directly; you will go blind!

The spectacle will occur at about 8:30 in the morning and totality will last between 6 to 7 minutes. Let’s hope it will be a clear day to see the eclipse.