Treasury Principal Secretary Chris Kiptoo on Tuesday, February 27, revealed that the ministry banned air flights for staff seeking to travel to Mombasa from any part of the country.
Speaking during an interview with Spice FM, PS Kiptoo stated that only Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung’u was approved to travel via air under the ministry's cost-saving measures.
On a need-to-need basis, Principal Secretaries in the ministry can also be approved for flights.
PS Kiptoo remarked that the proposals stemmed from a team tasked with exploring measures to trim the ministry expenditure as Kenya continues to revive the economy.
“We saw the need to implement austerity measures. We agreed on a raft of measures which we believe will result in a significant reduction in expenditure,” he explained.
“We have said flying to Mombasa will only be for the Cabinet Secretary. Maybe the Principal Secretary and senior staff who by this nature of the job cannot travel can be allowed.”
Other staff members in the ministry will be required to board the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) train and any other alternatives including travelling by road.
Other measures set to reduce expenditures at the exchequer include abolishing the purchase of snacks via budgeted funds.
At the moment, the Ministry only offers drinking water to its staff with individuals required to purchase meals from their pockets.
“We are also working on other measures like having a common printer instead of everyone having their own,” he explained, adding that printers will further be phased out completely with staff required to use emails instead of paperwork.
PS Kiptoo remarked that the Treasury had further adopted affordable environment-friendly materials during construction and stopped the majority of ongoing infrastructure projects.
“There is tremendous cut in travel. If you see the delegations that we had recently, those who accompanied President William Ruto, we hardly get many of our staff going the way they used to go,” he added.
The PS urged other Principal Secretaries who act as accounting officers for ministries to explore ways to cut down expenditure.
Earlier on, he stated that there was a need for prudent management of public resources as 60 per cent of revenue was allocated to financing domestic and foreign debts.
In October 2023, as part of austerity measures, President William Ruto ordered all government agencies to slash their expenditures by 10 per cent.
“There is a need for the Government to exercise prudence in resource utilisation, firmly stating that wastage and corruption would not be tolerated,” he stated then.
