President Uhuru Kenyatta is working towards leaving a legacy at the end of his team, but do you think this will be possible? Do you either find Uhuru’s big four agenda achievable? Well, debate over the head of state’s legacy strategy has been there, with some lawmakers supporting whilst others finding it a scam.
Gatundu South Member of Parliament Moses Kuria once made a mockery over the affordable housing project, terming it as totally unachievable. However, MPs have for the first time poured cold water on President Kenyatta’s legacy projects even as intricate details emerged of graft gobbling billions of shillings within the Jubilee administration.
In a bold report to Parliament, the Budget Committee expressed doubt Treasury’s budgetary allocations to the Big Four agenda are enough to achieve any meaningful outcome.
The lawmakers, a majority from Kenyatta’s ruling party, came to the conclusion just days after it emerged that Kenya is spending 68 per cent of its revenue to service loans.
“The concern is whether these expenditures provided are enough to achieve any meaningful outcome and whether the implementation are fully equipped/empowered for the task ahead,” the Budget and Appropriations Committee chaired by Kikuyu MP Kimani Ichungwa said. It delivered its report on the Budget Policy Statement and Debt Management Strategy.
President Kenyatta had prioritised food security, affordable housing, manufacturing and universal healthcare as his legacy projects.
But the mega capital projects, most of which were at the centre of the Jubilee re-election campaign, have been hit by unprecedented scandals.
The latest is the Sh21 billion sunk into the Arror and Kimwarer multi-purpose dams meant to generate hydropower complete with transmission, as well as irrigation.
The one-million-acre Galana-Kulalu irrigation project has collapsed due to squabbling between the contractor and the government.
In a stinging criticism of Treasury mandarins led by Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich, the 27-member committee said there is no major shift in expenditure allocations to the ministries and agencies that should deliver the Big Four dream.
“This indicates that the distribution of resources may not necessarily be geared towards actualising the Big Four plan,” the committee said.
According to Kuria, Kenyatta would have to deliver 250 houses every day, an economic and engineering miracle, to realise his pledge.
“We have 42 months left in the current term of the Jubilee government. To build 500,000 houses within the 42 months left, we need to build 11,905 houses per month from today going forward,” he said in January.
Apart from a cash crunch for future projects, the government is also faced with a backlog of stalled capital projects that need about Sh295 billion to complete. The committee expressed reservations, saying the National Treasury failed to develop a master plan to spell out implementation of the plan.
The master plan was to include a results matrix for the resource allocation as well as a monitoring and evaluation framework, making i easier to monitor progress.