President Ruto is on the spot over fresh promises to Kenyans despite not fulfilling most of his campaign pledges, nine months after taking office.
Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition Party, a member of the opposition, accused President Ruto of “feeding false hope” to Kenyans by making “more weird promises in the middle of a serious gloom” over unfulfilled promises and a high cost of living.
The Head of State promised to give boda boda drivers electric motorcycles in September to lower the cost of transportation during celebrations for the nation’s 60th Madaraka Day last Thursday in Embu town.
“With this intervention, owning and operating a boda boda will become affordable, secure, and profitable,” Ruto said.
Additionally, Ruto had stated that the price of cooking gas would decrease by this month’s first. But the Head of State stated that plans to eliminate gas taxes did not succeed in the supplementary budget and that it will take longer to reduce their cost when speaking to journalists from various media outlets during a joint televised interview at State House last month.
Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua’s promise to address the challenges facing milk and coffee production in the Central Region by last month and ensure the elimination of brokers to stabilise prices has yet to be accomplished.
Opiyo Wandayi, the minority leader in the National Assembly, declared on Sunday that the government was “clearly unable to fulfill their promises” and that it was “living in a make-believe world.”
The Head of State had pledged to review all security officers’ pay and employment terms within his first 100 days in office in order to bring them into line with the cost of living. This is yet to be realised.
Ruto also promised to work with county governments, health professionals, and other stakeholders to find a solution to the sector’s crisis. But there are still many difficulties that health workers must overcome on the job; some even refuse to use their equipment.
It has also not been possible to fulfill President Ruto’s promise to launch a quasi-judicial public inquiry to determine the extent of cronyism and State capture and offer recommendations within 30 days.
This is also true of a promise to transfer all duties legally assigned to counties within six months and to double funding for the school feeding programme to increase its beneficiary count from two million to four million.
In order to expand the programme and enroll eight million children in primary and Early Child Development (ECD) schools, conditional grants were also to be given to county governments.
The president also pledged to immediately put into effect a National Health Information System for Electronic Health Records to standardise and ensure the portability of patient data.
He declared last Thursday that the National Health Insurance Fund would be reformed to better serve Kenyans at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale.