Want discipline? Borrow a leaf from Magufuli’s tough love
The chairman of the President’s Council of Advisors, Dr David Ndii, last week told Kenyans that the pain and suffering they are currently experiencing are not going away any time soon.
In fact, it may get worse because the debt trap that has triggered the cash crunch the government is grappling with will linger on. Reason? Even larger debt repayments are falling due shortly.
He was explaining why, in a historic first, the Kenya government was been unable to pay March salaries to many of its workers. To paraphrase him, it is either the people who take the hit or the government defaults on its payments.
But he also lamented the outrageous wastefulness in public service. It was not the first time a senior public servant has expressed outrage at this abominable situation.
The wastefulness is a shocking profligacy that becomes even more profound in the face of the extreme cash squeeze now directly denying Kenyans their livelihoods.
As I listened to and read the reactions to Dr Ndii’s and other’s comments, I remembered that ours is not a unique situation and the helplessness that the government is exhibiting in dealing with at least the sloth and avarice within it is unacceptable. Tanzania’s late President John Magufuli offers a recent and effective example.
Wasteful habit
Remember the 2015 trend: #WhatWouldMagufuliDo?
It was inspired by his ruthless approach to stem a similarly wasteful habit in the Tanzanian government. Among the actions he took soon after taking over power was: Cancelling Tanzania’s Independence Day celebrations.
Limiting foreign travel to only what was most essential, as judged by the President’s office. Once approved, those travelling needed to get special permission directly from him or from the Chief Secretary of the Cabinet.
Limiting first and business-class travel for all officials except the President, the Vice-President and the Prime Minister. Cancelling all government workshops and seminars held in expensive hotels, with ministries and parastatals ordered to use their own boardrooms.
Removing sitting allowances for government employees. (These are the famous per diems that often are the sole reason why most Kenyan public officers attend meetings and training workshops). Cutting the budget of an inauguration party for the then-new Parliament from $100,000 to $7,000 (a strong symbolic act).
The late President hardly travelled out of the country, to demonstrate that it was not that critical for presidents to galivant all over the world seeking unspecified favours that very rarely translated into beneficial public projects on the ground. Entourages of ministers and other senior officials to international meetings were limited to two and three people.
He approached corruption the same way. Summary sackings and surcharges were frequent and effective even if some of his public pronouncements elicited murmurs of disapproval from legal and human rights circles. That did not faze him at all, choosing instead to ride on the populist wave of approvals.
It worked. Public servants styled up. Significant savings were reported. There was a visible and palpable improvement in the provision of public services. The First Lady was even admitted to Muhimbili Hospital to demonstrate confidence in the public health service.
Our new government has been anything but frugal. The Presidency has splurged cash on travel and entertainment that it has already burst its annual allocation. We are seeing large ministerial delegations crisscrossing the world ostensibly in search of solutions to old problems whose solutions exist but have not been implemented. Like going to Zambia to seek solutions for our maize shortage, or buying tractors from Belarus!
Despite a pledge to shave off Sh300 billion from the budget this year, there is no evidence that the discipline exists to curb travel and limit excessive patronage to hotels in Naivasha, Mombasa and other destinations.
One-day fete
Millions will be spent upgrading the Embu Stadium to host this year’s Madaraka Day, a one-day fete whose intended celebration of national pride will be blighted by the poverty, hunger and despondency that is the burden of being an ordinary Kenyan. Why can’t that day be marked quietly by a presidential speech from State House?
The disdain and arrogance with which a hefty monthly Bill to fund 50 new Chief Administrative Secretaries was recently slapped on the frazzled taxpayer, and the selfish allocations of hundreds of millions of shillings for luxury car purchases for the offices of the Deputy President and the Prime Cabinet Secretary are very loud expressions of the wastefulness we lament, displayed with shocking aplomb.
If the President is as alive to this wastefulness as he says he is, and if he is listening to the public lamentations against his young government, it could help if at every urge to sign off a public expense he paused and reflected: #WhatWouldMagufuliDo? BY DAILY NATION



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