Save Kenya, punish tax cash thieves

Each year the indefatigable Auditor General shines a harsh torch on the hundreds of millions of shillings squandered, lost, stolen, misappropriated by a loathsome bunch of national and county bureaucrats.

Not one county administration or county assembly gets a clean bill of health. It's become one of those grating rituals the mendacious accounting officers do not bother to read, let alone act to rectify.

The pilfering is highlighted and nothing is normally done to either stop or even punish the culpable. The Auditor General’s reports just gather dust in government offices. Often times the losses are attributed to stalled projects and payment of salaries to ghost workers.

If the country is keen to root out graft and lift its long-suffering and disillusioned citizens out of poverty, something needs to be done. And it should be done urgently.

For a start, the counties must hire qualified staff so trivial excuses such as missing papers can stop being part of the auditor's report.

Secondly, it is should be mandatory to vet all cadres. 

And to put a stop to the year-in-year-out misuse of public funds, it is time the oversight authorities put in place deterrent penalties.

The sums fiddled could have completed a road, a hospital or even schools to lift the standard of living of millions instead of fattening a rapacious few.

Our leaders, sadly, long forgot their roles. They should get out of this corrupt stupor and for once make taxation a welcome affair with the public sure their cash will be spent on the public good.

Quote of the Day: “The time is always right to do what is right.”

Martin Luther King Jr

He and others sat in the new integrated bus on December 21, 1956.