Kenyans can’t tighten belts they don’t have, cannot afford

Kenyans are beginning to raise concerns about the frequency and value addition of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s travels outside the country.

This comes after it emerged that State House hired a private jet for the President’s trips to Japan and Russia this past week, at Sh1.5 million per hour, at a time the government announced that they are broke and were scaling down operations.

These two consecutive trips would not have been a big deal had they cost less.

Every Kenyan wants to see their country prosper, and wouldn’t have an issue with the President calling on our international friends asking for help to alleviate the pain and suffering we are currently going through.

It would take a mad person to pick a bone with a President doing all he can to marshal support from wherever he can find it, if that is what it takes to lessen our economic burden and set us on a path of sustainable prosperity.

However, there is a general feeling that these trips have not been undertaken in good faith, and we’re not seeing a return on investment.

We are asking why these trips are shrouded in secrecy – we only get to know about them after the President has reached his destination, sometimes after sustained pressure from the public on the whereabouts of their Head of State.

There is no longer the pomp and glamour that surrounded the departure of the President every time he went overseas. It is now beginning to look like he is running away from his people.

If you’re using taxpayers’ money to travel around the world, it is only fair your office be transparent with your itinerary and accountable for every penny spent while you are away.

It is a mark of good governance for the number one public officer to set the pace for the whole country to emulate. Kenyans are not asking for the moon, only the bare necessities of his oath of office.

Gobbling insane amounts of taxpayers’ money on private jets at a time when government services are suffering a lack of funds is insensitive to the plight of suffering Kenyans, and goes to show how out of touch he is to the daily realities of his people.

The Treasury Cabinet Secretary, Amb Ukur Yatani, has been gracious enough to make public some bitter truths about the nature of our public debt and the gaping hole in our revenue targets.

He told a Parliamentary committee that the government has been pushing the revenue collection target to unrealistic levels. Because we cannot continue borrowing to plug the deficit, the only way out of this mire is to cut government expenditure, as a drastic measure, to save us from going down.

The government cannot say they did not see this coming. For years on end, those who went to school to study money matters have been issuing red alerts against uncontrolled borrowing.

Three things cannot be long hidden; the sun, the moon and this government's contempt for taking up expert advice.

Kenyans are now suffering the consequences of bad decisions made by a few people high up the government food chain, who neither consulted us nor listened to the advice of economic experts.

This past week, the Judiciary sent a worrying circular indicating their intention to cut their budgets for crucial functions after receiving the bad news from Treasury that money was in short supply.

Court sessions are currently frozen, taking Kenyans back to the painful era of case backlogs. When you knowingly tamper with the speed at which justice is served, you become an accomplice in the denial of justice to users of the court.

When you go to the polls to elect a government, you do so believing that the promises made during the campaign period were made in sincerity and commitment to public good.

No politician promised to make life unbearable for the suffering Kenyan, neither did we come across any pre-election manifesto promising to make it difficult for small and medium enterprises to thrive.

Basic commodities were to be affordable, secondary education free and graduates were to be connected to paid internships.

Two years since the Jubilee government started their second term, the situation on the ground is dire. Companies are closing down, workers are being retrenched, unemployment is soaring, and depression is becoming a national concern.

This is not the Kenya we were promised when the Jubilee government was asking for votes. They painted us a picture of a country high on the global happiness index and low on the corruption scale. The reverse is now true, and we are being forced to tighten belts we do not have – and cannot even afford.