• Every year the nation reacts to death and starvation splashed on TV screens, with hollow pledges it won't happen again.
• DP William Ruto has warned that chiefs who say people die of hunger will be taken in and questioned.
Former Mandera senator Billow Kerrow said on Friday that death by starvation is the same as State terrorism.
Kerrow vented his anger and frustrations on social media and in a hard-hitting post accused the government of doing little feed its own people.
“Innocent lives are taken away due to willful negligence by the State. Every year, the nation reacts to death and starvation splashed on our TV screens, with hollow pledges that it will not recur again,” he posted.
He added, “Malnourished Kenyans wasting away under extreme hunger and thirst, their livelihoods destroyed by ravaging drought. Unashamedly, Government officials are more interested in downplaying the statistics of the dead, and outright denials."
Kerrow said it is painful to lose innocent lives "through utter neglect and dereliction of duty, just as painfully as we lose lives in terrorist attacks".
“No Gov’t official even bothers to visit the starving in their locations or console the bereaved. A contemptible State to whom poor lives do not matter. How could such a Government still talk about building commuter trains, digitising IDs, building Nuclear power plants, etc, when it cannot feed its poor,” Kerrow said.
Deputy President William Ruto recently threatened that any chiefs who dare say people have died of hunger will be taken in and questioned. Some residents have said chiefs who lie about no deaths will be killed.
Recently Devolution Cabinet secretary Eugene Wamalwa assured Kenyans that government has made adequate plans to ensure that no one will die of hunger.
“Kenya has got enough food, there was bumper harvest in Kitale and stores are full of food, farmers are experiencing lack of market. We have also stocked more than four million bags of maize at National Cereals and Produce stores. Therefore, you should not be worried because there is enough food,” he was quoted as saying.
He spoke in Samburu county where he launched a relief food distribution.