Last month's outburst from our legislators in Mombasa over the delayed disbursement of CDF and the standoff between the national government and the governors over revenue division are a clear indication that our economy is ailing.
The Treasury Cabinet secretary, unlike his predecessors who always painted a beautiful picture however ugly our economy appeared, has been gracious enough to admit the bad state of the economy, and an intervention to resuscitate it is overdue.
Apart from Kenya's persistently poor fiscal demeanour, it's evident that, in recent times, most countries are struggling to regain economic stability. This year, the global economy is projected to shrink given emerging issues from the Russia-Ukraine war to the coronavirus pandemic that weakened the world economy.
This, though, cannot be an excuse for the leadership not to explore ways to protect their economies from suffocation. Kenya too is not an exception. Kenya still struggles with rudimentary fiscal challenges that, if set straight, could put her in a competitive position among middle-income counties.
For instance, it defies reason that our leaders still see the logic in asking for duplication of responsibilities. What is the reason for affecting the CDF and other related funds? That is highly hyped for bursaries, as MCAs also ask for a Ward Development Fund with exactly the same functions, though on a lower scale. Senators and women representatives are feeling left out too on development initiatives and are busy lobbying for some allocation too, in the name of discrimination.
This country can save a lot if stringent measures are taken. The government needs to streamline its financial management system and ensure that all funds are served from a single account to discourage duplication of roles, which diversifies corruption and results in more wastage of our limited resources.
The wage bill is another area that marks our fiscal indiscipline. We must assess the impact of every job opportunity and evaluate the workload for every government employee, even if it means introducing contract-based employment. I was concerned when I visited a public office in the middle of last month and only a few officials had reported to work while continuing to receive their full benefits.
Perhaps it's time we borrowed a leaf from Japanese work ethics, where government employees are not allowed to enter the workstations with personal mobile phones, let alone get late for work. This is in a quest to ensure optimum production, unlike our setting, where employees spend a lot of office time on job-unrelated call conversations.
Finally, as we audit our production and management, our focus should be on specialisation. Employees should be asked to stick to their jobs. We can encourage jacks of all trades to thrive and optimise production amid conflicts of interest. We must ensure employees don't engage in other businesses and are sufficiently paid as the economy would allow, and those that can't secure employment are supported to engage in gainful ventures in the private sector.
Unless we brace ourselves and consider every aspect of our economy, the current trajectory has no promise of a breakthrough at all. We can't continue to rely on debt and misuse the same finances at the same time.
The government should heed the finance secretary's distress call and convene a national dialogue with an interest in exploring other avenues of economic revitalisation and drawing new rules of financial engagement; otherwise, these current practices will plunder our country into the economic abyss.
Good governance advocate
