What are your thoughts on the wage bill?
The State of California alone has a huge population but they only have one governor.We have 52 million people but we have a national government and we have 47 other governments each governor has a deputy the only way to bite the bullet is to persuade parliament to agree that let the status quo remain the way it is until 2027 but in 2027 there should be a referendum regarding the restructuring of government to where counties are reduced like 20.I remember one senator the former senator Mombasa. Hassan Omar made a statement in a conference I was attending at one of the Catholic institutions and he told the assembly there is no sensible Kenyan who does not know Kenya does not need more than 14 counties. How do you expect the country with only 52 million Kenyans to have all these state officers earning salaries. The government is spending 70% of his revenue to pay workers and only 30 for development.
Where do you think this wage crisis began?
I spoke to the former head of the public service Mr Kinyua. I asked him why he did not advise the former president Kibaki not to approve this idea of 47 counties because I think that is the greatest headache we have 47 counties with 47 governors,47 deputy governors then all these new government structures they have to pay these people. We have now found ourselves with a very huge debt burden and now.Our bond has given us the ability to redeem our euro bonds though it was just extending the debt for another period of 10 years.The doctor’s collective bargaining agreement was signed it was signed in distress because we were going into an election. These unions and others wait until now they have to manipulate to get to what they want because we are going into an election soon.I really pray that Kenyans can accept that unless counties are reduced we are going to be in problems.We need to reduce the burden for those people who are salaried if you can check the statistics of a country like the biggest country economy in Africa Nigeria its GDP is a bit manageable. The Nigerian population is 223 million and they don’t have as many as representatives as we have.
What is your parting shot?
Unless government salaries are reduced,we can’t reduce public debt because the creation of all these 47 governments and the national government
is the reason we have so many workers drawing salaries that’s my position.I want the president to reduce
the budget by 300 billion every year so they can
bring the country back
to where things were and from a political perspective
he should also balance representatives
so that no community
says that they don’t have
somebody apponted among them in government.
