Punguza Mizigo: GoK Plan to Cut on Unnecessary Expenditure

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tana
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Joined: Tue Jun 04, 2019 1:00 am

Punguza Mizigo: GoK Plan to Cut on Unnecessary Expenditure

Post by tana » Fri Sep 27, 2019 8:07 am

“The government has suspended all benchmarking and study tours with immediate effect.

“It has also limited government delegates for missions abroad to a maximum of four, restricted domestic air travel to economy class and slashed purchases of newspapers and furniture by 75 per cent.

“In a September 25 circular communicating a Cabinet decision to all government agencies and departments that will also affect the Judiciary and the Legislature, acting Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani has announced nine measures in another attempt to deal with a bloated public expenditure.

“Accounting officers of various government ministries and agencies have been ordered to conduct all government-sponsored trainings in the country, particularly at the Kenya School of Government and other government training institutions, except for highly specialised courses.

“The measures take place immediately.”
https://www.nation.co.ke/news/CS-halts- ... index.html
Very good move. Now the government must make sure the directive is followed to the letter.

This will save billions of shillings per month. The bulk of the money saved should go towards improving public health services and funding higher education and research.

NB: This plan to cut wastage of public funds should be publicised, so that the public can report the officials flouting these regulations.

I recall a recent case where a sports team was kicked out of a Nairobi hotel for not paying their bills. Kenyans rushed to blame the ministry of sports for “neglecting Kenyan sportsmen and women”.

It later emerged that the sports team had been directed by the ministry to go to a government-run facility, but the officials disregarded that directive and took the team to a private hotel, where obviously they were to get some kickbacks - pure corruption.

There should be ads on radio & TV highlighting this directive. If the message is publicised so that every Kenyan knows that the government means business when it comes to cutting unnecessary expenditures (and these unnecessary expenditures dovetail very well with corruption), then it is ordinary people who will be reporting public officials flouting these rules.

Also, for public officials to take this directive seriously, it is important that the officials who flout the directive are punished, and the action publicised, in order to serve as a deterrent.
GoKPunguzaMizigo.jpg

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