Failure to align promises with reality hurts Kenya Kwanza's credibility

The car ‘Kenya Kwanza’ has been misfiring on all four cylinders, leaking oil through the tail pipe and pumping the atmosphere full of carbon dioxide. 

It baffles because in 2022, Kenya Kwanza presented itself as a pimped up six-cylinder super car that would thrill us to no end with its power and performance. Kenyans got the antithesis instead. 

The most critical sectors of our economy, education and health are limping, latching from one crisis to another. Meanwhile, a bewildered, obviously overwhelmed government has been buying time by committing itself to binding agreements it knows it lacks capacity to follow through. 

Lecturers feel dizzy from being run through circles chasing their dues. Ditto doctors while secondary school principals have been set on collision paths with parents, workers and suppliers because capitation is erratic, yet schools must run. The fumbling and confusion surrounding Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) are ample indicators that the switch from the 8-4-4 system to CBC was politically motivated.

Professional advice from career educationists was evidently not sought. Had that been done, contingencies would have been anticipated and solutions proffered. It might have been politically expedient to hurriedly change the education system and those who stood to benefit in any way already have, and do not care what happens next. 

The government has had four years since CBC’s rollout to put up adequate infrastructure but has been dragging its feet. Now there's frantic haste to build classrooms. There are a lot of gray areas around the selection of textbooks, their supply and availability. In a country whose second name is corruption, these two can be exploited to become money minting ventures in which learners become casualties.

What citizens are getting under the Social Health Authority (SHA) scheme is the complete opposite of what they were told by no less an authority than Kenya Kwanza’s supremo.

The most attractive thing about SHA when it was being sold to citizens was the assurance that its premiums would be lower than those charged under the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF). While NHIF charged the unemployed Sh500 monthly, Ruto told Kenyans they would pay Sh300 under SHA.

It turns out that was a salesman's spiel. Only when people go for registration does the truth hit them. Monthly premiums have incrementally moved from Sh450, to Sh540, Sh650 and now the minimum is Sh850.

Questions during registration use poverty and wealth indicators to help the system identify the needy and charge them lesser amounts. However, that is perfunctory, a meaningless formality because in many instances, the destitute are required to pay higher monthly premiums than some of the employed people.

Monthly SHA contributions for the employed are pegged at 2.75 per cent of one's salary. That means that someone earning Kenya’s minimum wage of Sh15,120 contributes Sh415 monthly.

Those on Sh30,000 monthly salary contribute Sh815. On the other hand, there are poor people, widows, the frail and elderly without any means of income or support whatsoever, who are required to pay Sh850 monthly. Where is the logic in this? 

Charging the poor who live in dilapidated mud-walled houses, use pit latrines, have no means of income and own no land or property higher monthly premiums than the employed who lead comfortable lives is ridiculous and obnoxious.

Moreover, it is dishonest to market SHA as offering free medical services in dispensaries. Most, if not all government dispensaries are understaffed and lack medicines. Most lack basic things and still use outdated monocular microscopes to conduct malaria tests. Others don't have capacity to conduct any test or to treat anything beyond headaches and fever. They are clearly not worth a bother.

It is the untruths and the fact there are more complaints about SHA, even from medics who have threatened industrial action, than positive stories that hamper registration efforts. Only a miracle, then, can restore public trust in a government that runs on mendacity.