Deputy President William Ruto yesterday appeared on TV Stations at the prime hour of between 7 PM and 9 PM to highlight the achievements by the Jubilee government in the three years they have been in power. As a result, a Twitter hashtag #DeliveryAt3 trended for hours that saw many ridicule the stated achievements from industrialization, education, communication, transportation and construction to fiscal and monetary policy that, according to the DP, have ensured that Kenya has taken a steady economic growth path started by the previous regime.
Although I did not have a chance to follow the highlight on TV, I have been able to do so on Twitter in order to pick up important highlights for this article. I have also been able to go through the Jubilee Manifesto and pinpoint important areas that I thought are significant to socio-economic stability of the country and that are easy to verify. I start with outlining the important points I have extracted from the Jubilee Manifesto in relation to the mentioned achievements Jubilee has had as she turns 3.
National Cohesion
The very first challenge Jubilee Manifesto recognizes is the issue of National Cohesion, which is stated in the manifesto that “animosity has been allowed to turn into ethnic rivalry” and that “communities have been troubled by violence and the resulting tension has been fuelled by a sense of exclusion and disadvantage”. To alleviate these challenges, the Jubilee Manifesto proposed to:
- Use affirmative action to ensure that underrepresented and marginalized groups are properly represented in every respect.
- Make sure that all IDPs are settled and where possible returned to their homes in accordance with the law and have a decent place to live when they do.
- Ensure that 30% of appointees to public bodies and parastatals are women.
- Actively promote the appointment of young people, the disabled and marginalized groups to public positions.
Has this been achieved? There was no mention of National Cohesion in the tweets attributed to DP William Ruto under the hashtag #DeliveryAt3. What I can attest to however is that point 1 and 4 in the four points above have been deliberately ignored.
Security
The Jubilee Manifesto recognized terrorism, ethnic clashes in limited hotspots, instability in nearby countries, and crime in the streets of Kenya as pressing issues that needed immediate redress. To offer solution to these, the Jubilee Manifesto recommended to:
- Equip and modernise the security forces, especially through increased motorization
- Improve police pay and conditions of service.
- Incorporate CCTV technology in the fight against crime
- Promote tenets of family values such as honesty, a positive and production based work ethic, and responsibility so as to weaken the routes of crime.
- Increase the police to citizen ratio from 1:1150 to 1:800 within 5 years by recruiting extra 15,000 police officers per annum and enhance efficiency by providing modern security equipment and transport, including at least two police vehicles per ward.
According to #DeliveryAt3 tweets, the Jubilee Government has added 20,000 police officers in the last three years instead of 45,000 projected from the Jubilee Manifesto – a shortfall of 15,000 police officers. On the police vehicles, 2400 units have been added, and every police officer has insurance cover (although a Kennedy Otieno who claims to be a cop supported by another tweep by the name Amos Rono stated that the insurance cover not yet implemented).
Arts, Sports and Culture
Jubilee Manifesto recognises that the potential in Arts, Sports and Culture have not been accorded the opportunity to improve our quality of life and grow our economy; stating that “Kenya should be a serious contender to host future regional and international sporting events”. “While we have some of the best creative talent in Africa … our copyright laws and productions systems seem skewed against them”. To resolve these, the manifesto recommended that the Jubilee Government will:
- Pursue tax incentives for individuals and private sector in Sports, Arts and Entertainment sectors.
- Facilitate the professionalization of sports through introduction of professional coaches in schools.
- Establish youth development centers in all counties that will house a fully equipped library, an ICT hub, five sports pitches, and a social hall.
- Build five NEW national sports stadia in Kisumu, Mombasa, Nakuru, Eldoret and Garissa, while upgrading EXISTING sporting facilities at the County level to accommodate swimming, tennis, basketball and rugby.
- Promote performing arts by constructing ultra-modern National Theatre with audio-visual live links in Nairobi
- Among many many other promises.
Achievements in this area included enabling the Sports Act of 2013 that created 6 institutions to oversee sporting events in the country, rehabilitation of 3 stadia in 3 counties, feasibility studies done for building 3 national stadia in Nairobi (although in the manifesto Nairobi was not one of the Counties where new stadia would be built), and increased participation in international sporting events.
Healthcare
In the Jubilee Manifesto, it is stated that only 1 in 10 Kenyans had health insurance before they took office and that the public health facilities were stifled with inadequate management, insufficient medical supplies, and poor procurement procedures. To address these challenges, Jubilee proposed to:
- Achieve primary healthcare for all Kenyans starting with women, expectant and breastfeeding mothers, and persons with disabilities by increasing health financing from 6% to 15%.
- Increase the number of health facilities at the community level and increase mobile health clinic services.
- Reform NHIF to uproot corruption.
- Guarantee that every family has access to a fully equipped health center within 5 miles (8 kilometers) of their home.
- Distribute mosquito nets to all families that need them.
According #DelivertyAt3, the Jubilee achievements on Health have been:
- Ministry of health has given tenders worth shs 543 million to the youth
- Maternity fees has been scrapped in all public health facilities
- This was not in the tweets but we all know the first lady has been running to increase the mobile clinics across the counties.
Many tweetps complained of poor health services due to understaffing, lack of equipment, and general poor health services. Tweeps said that Public Servants don’t prefer the public hospitals but prefer the private hospitals.
1 2