During his second inauguration ceremony at Kasarani Stadium in November 2017, President Uhuru Kenyatta announced that he would be channeling resources towards and concentrating on four key sectors to accelerate economic growth and improve service delivery to Kenyans during his second and last term in office namely; Affordable Healthcare, Food Security, Manufacturing and Housing.
The action plan, on which his legacy is hinged, was greeted with much fanfare at the beginning which is slowly fizzling out after the National Assembly’s Budget and Appropriations Committee on Wednesday expressed its reservations on the viability of the ambitious projects in light of the country’s ballooning public debt, which presently stands at Ksh5.3 trillion.
“The status of the projects in the current financial year has not been expressly provided probably due to the fact that the financial year is yet to come to an end. It is, therefore, not easy to determine the status of the Big Four affiliated projects,” reads the committee’s feedback on the 2019/2020 Budget Policy Statement
So much is the country’s perilous financial position that the committee rejected requests by different agencies for more funding including that from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) which had requested an extra Ksh700 million to keep up its tempo in the war against corruption.
DPP Noordin Haji had warned that failure to honour the request would derail the war on graft amid numerous scandals which have severely dented the government’s image.
Read: Government struggling to sustain salaries over balloning debt
“What we are asking of ministries, departments and independent institutions is that they live within their means. They should be able to rationalize and identify what their priorities are,” said Kimani Ichungw’a, the committee’s chairperson on Tuesday.
The revelations will come as a big blow to President Kenyatta who never fulfilled a number of pledges during his first term including the free laptops for primary school children project which has now been ditched for computer laboratories.
See also: More debt for Kenya as Treasury set to borrow Sh583.6 billion
In the 2013 Jubilee Manifesto, President Uhuru Kenyatta and DP William Ruto had promised the country five world class stadia, a pledge which now remains a distant dream.
Failure to deliver the Big Four will certainly raise questions on his ability to deliver.
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