Government must do better on public communication to inspire confidence and reduce trust deficit

If there is anything Kenyans can say the Government does consistently, it is fumbling and bumbling. There is no problem that the government saw that it failed to fumble over and make even worse

As a matter of fact, its perennial fumbling has led to trust deficit so much so that whenever the government initiates a project, Kenyans start waiting for the time it will go wrong.

And consistently, it has never let them down, because one way or the other, something goes wrong, and the Government starts groping in the dark for an explanation.

Think of any project initiated by the Government that went on smoothly without any hitches, mostly caused by underhand deals in line ministries and associated state departments.

There is probably none, even though there are muted reports that when it came to handling Covid-19 and the vaccination, the Government of Kenya scored much better that its neighbours.

It was probably let down by Kenyans who saw every move as sinister, and shied away from going for the vaccination, leading to hundreds of thousands of vaccines expiring in government stores.

As the parental authority, the Government needs to come clean and inspire confidence in the people who pay taxes to get services.

Every move it makes attracts conspiracy theories, and everything people think about it is negative. This trust deficit makes many Kenyans shun public facilities even in the rare case that they are well run.

This trust deficit has been caused by its inability to communicate well. During the Covid-19 days, there was an attempt to make information available to the public, but still Kenyans were skeptical.

They doubted the figures provided by the government even though they did not have their own, and even doubted if the vaccine they were getting was safe or effective.

The government has done little to inspire confidence though — but it needs to up its game when it comes to public communication.