Raila Urges Ruto: Tackle Corruption to Cut Living Costs
Leading the Azimio movement, Raila Odinga provided President William Ruto with advice on Thursday regarding how to revive Kenya’s faltering economy and reduce the cost of living in advance of Ruto’s inaugural State of the Nation Address.
Raila remarked to university students at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Foundation in Nairobi, satirizing that reducing government corruption was a more effective remedy for Kenya’s economy than raising taxes.
The former prime minister illustrated the approaches adopted by the grand coalition government, which encompassed lifestyle audits and efforts to curb corruption.
”Once we subjected all these procurement officers to a lifestyle audit and sacked some of them, the government started procuring competitively, prices became less, so the government was able to get more and that is how we succeeded,” he noted.
The former prime minister further illustrated his point by citing the year 2002, a period of economic collapse, during which the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition (NARC) government came to power. At the time, the government was reportedly only collecting Ksh200 billion, according to Raila.
Raila disclosed that during that period, every ministry had procurement officers who were delegated by the Treasury. Nevertheless, the accountants, according to Raila, had developed a propensity to register a maximum of three companies to procure government contracts for themselves.
The leader of the opposition recalled how the officers defrauded the government by providing inflated products and services to state agencies.
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Kenyans should always attribute the success of former President Kibaki to the NARC government’s ability to eradicate corruption, he continued.
”These things are not going to get better because these people are actually messing up, they don’t know how to run a competitive economy,” Raila stated.
The former prime minister subsequently voiced his disapproval of the government’s treatment of civil servants, claiming they lacked the necessary qualifications for their positions and were uninformed about economic issues.
”We told these people several times that they are in a hole and they should not continue to dig but they didn’t understand,” the Azimio leader stated.
As a result, Raila Odinga emphasized that increasing taxes was not the most effective solution to the rising cost of living, predicting that opposition would eventually develop.
While speaking, Raila was briefed by university student leaders from Kenyan universities on the myriad of issues that their institutions face.
Raila Urges Ruto: Tackle Corruption to Cut Living Costs
