President William Ruto's government is in the spotlight barely three months after he was sworn in.
On Monday, November 21, reports detailed that a section of the 386 Kenyans who attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) summit was purely joyriders.
Details posted on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change website showed that Kenya's delegation also included the wives of dignitaries and other individuals whose duties were not specified.
"Kenya's delegation attended the conference in phases, in which some left earlier than the rest of the dignitaries," wrote United Nations Climate Change Conference.
It was also revealed that Kenya had one of the largest delegations in the just-concluded COP27 summit in Egypt. Ruto's administration came second to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which took 459 people to the Sharm El Sheikh Summit.
"Kenyan dignitaries played very important roles in the conference. Some of the Kenyan leaders addressed a number of issues in the summit," United Nations Climate Change Conference confirmed.
Curiously, some of the individuals who were cleared, along with the President, and Cabinet Secretaries, were neither government officials nor experts.
This contrasted the government's austerity measures outlined by President William Ruto during his inauguration on September 13, 2022.
The President ordered the national budget to be cut by Ksh300 billion, with bans on foreign travel, training, and purchases of furniture and motor vehicles.
On September 30, 2022, Treasury CS Njuguna Ndung’u effected the directive which directly affected the ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) 2022/2023 budgets.
“Further, it has been decided that all MDAs will rationalise the development estimates by removing all new projects, rationalising projects with implementation challenges, reviewing counterpart funds and scaling down on externally funded projects with absorption between 60 to 65 per cent,” Prof Ndung’u confirmed.
To underline the depth of the recurrent expenditure, he enforced a 75 per cent cut on research and feasibility study budgets.
Ruto's government also introduced a budget rationalisation programme to free up cash for other more critical projects such as healthcare, education, and food security.
