Last week’s announcement by Acting Treasury CS Ukur Yatani that his ministry will cut expenditure on non-essential items was music to the ears of Kenyans who are tired of wasteful spending.
To set the round of cuts rolling, Mr Yatani will need to look no further than the Executive and Parliament, which the Controller of Budget has revealed spent Sh6.4 billion on foreign travel alone in the last fiscal year.
A 78 percent rise in foreign travel expenses is simply unacceptable in a country where millions of people are struggling to put food on the table, and where other more critical functions like healthcare remain underfunded.
Kenyans have long become used to public officials preaching austerity and then doing the exact opposite when it comes to their allowances and travel emoluments.
Granted, the foreign trips especially by the President, are seen as an important tool in Kenya’s diplomacy, opening up trade opportunities for the country.
However, the fact is that the country is running a large budget deficit that is costly to fill, and the solution is to bring down recurrent expenditure.
The painful cuts promised by the CS can only work if all arms of government accept that they must tighten their belts.
The Executive, being the custodian of the public purse through the National Treasury, must therefore lead by example.
It will prove hard to get the other agencies of government to buy into the idea of cuts when they see top State officials spend billions on foreign travel, which is synonymous with fat allowances or per diem payments.
Parliament, as the representative of the people, also ought to be at the forefront of safeguarding public resources from wastage.
We ask the government to cut the number of trips and to limit them to essential tours that must benefit the taxpayer.
As for the Executive, we should see a shift from non-critical trips to ministers, as opposed to presidential trips that demand a much larger team.
It is only by practising what they preach that government officials like Mr Yatani can hope to achieve the spending cuts that are now necessary for Kenya to keep the books going.
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