Fuel protests triggered by State's insensitivity

Protestors block the Nairobi Namanga Road at Kitengela town during the fuel hike demonstrations. [Peterson Githaiga, Standard] 

Yesterday, Kenyans forcefully delivered a message that the government has been desperately avoiding, but can no longer ignore. Across the country, citizens took to the streets over fuel prices that have become the most visible sign of a government that taxes heavily but refuses to listen.

The demos were predictable, and had those in power bothered to heed the persistent public outcry over the multiplying levies heaped on fuel, yesterday need not have happened. The petroleum development levy, the road maintenance levy, the excise duty, layer after layer of charges that drive pump prices up, increasing the burden on ordinary Kenyans daily. Neighbouring countries pay far less for fuel, yet petroleum destined for landlocked Uganda transits through Kenya at extra cost. That irony is not lost on the public.

The economic damage inflicted in just one day of countrywide protests should serve as a wake-up call for the government. Workers could not get to their places of work. Factories produced goods that could not be taken to the market. Suppliers could not deliver and consumers could not buy. Across all this paralysis, the government failed to collect taxes on services that had ground to a halt. The very revenue it was protecting through its intransigence evaporated in one day. Billions were lost, not saved.

Schoolchildren were caught in the disruption, too. That alone ought to shame those responsible into action. Kenya cannot afford to normalise such chaos, and its leaders ought not to treat it as a manageable crisis that will blow out.

The government has a habit of waiting out public anger, banking on the fact that fury fades. That calculus is wrong this time. The cost-of-living burden is real, sustained, and personal to millions. It cannot be wished away.

The right thing, and the only sensible thing, is for the government to revisit these fuel taxes meaningfully and urgently. Leaders cannot afford to govern without listening, because then, they will be presiding over a growing crisis. Kenyans deserve a government willing to do the hard but necessary thing, which is to ease the burden, and do it now.