How CORD government plans to create employment opportunities

Many people have reacted cynically regarding the manifestos issued by various political parties recently.

The common refrain is that there is nothing new in any of the manifestos, which is not really a great statement to make. There is nothing new in the way the sun rises and sets everyday but people have their own unique ways of appreciating sunsets and sunrises precisely because in each one of them, though seemingly common, there is something new.

Almost every presidential candidate talks about jobs, but they do not have the same ideas nor the same conception of how the jobs will be created. Worst of all, some of our people think that when the Government creates jobs it should actually employ people and show how it is going to create these jobs within the governmental bureaucracy.

I experienced this when I was Minister for Planning and National Development. Within the first month of the Narc government, the Kenya Association of Manufacturers were asking me where the jobs so created were! I thought, on my part, that they were the right job creators. Let me discuss how the CORD coalition intends to create jobs and how this is different from others talking about the same issue.

Building infrastructure will create jobs, particularly through the modernisation and expansion of our transportation system as we had originally envisaged in the Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation of 2003-2007. Take for example our old, outdated and dilapidated railway line from Mombasa to Kisumu, from Nakuru to Eldoret all the way to Kasese in Uganda. We intend to modernise this system by replacing it with a standard gauge railway that is electrically powered. Old lines like Nairobi-Nanyuki, Kisumu-Butere etc will equally be modernised, adding more lines so that we can remove heavy trailers from our roads and reduce road maintenance costs.

All this means that more people will be put to work in the building of the railways. The building itself will bring in even more experts and thousands of manual workers. In the meantime the service sector will also grow and employ even more people on the food, hotel, entertainment, health and security industries, to mention but a few.

When completed the impact on jobs creation will even be bigger. The demand on electricity alone will set our energy sector to produce more power and hence employ more people. The workshops producing spare parts for the maintenance of the system will grow, bringing in the need to invest in our Numerical Machines Complex (NMC) and waking it up from its long slumber occasioned by neglect and the lack of vision by previous governments.

As the Minister for Planning and National Development, I remember putting the case for the revival of the NMC during the Narc government.

The then Minister for Trade and Industry, Mukhisa Kituyi (a former student of mine) joined me in lobbying the Government to revive this plant so as to undertake the task of building cranes for the port of Mombasa instead of importing these simple gadgets lock, stock and barrel from Germany. We thought this was a sure way of jobs creation and the deepening of our industrialisation process. Rather than being applauded for our good ideas we were thoroughly scandalised by some of our colleagues in Government and a hostile Press. We were dismissed as corrupt and naive. The corruption angle was brought in because we had dared to suggest that the NMC should collaborate with the Industrial Plant of East Africa, owned by a Mr. Sagoo, who had built similar cranes at the port of Dar es Salaam.

It was assumed that Mr Sagoo, being an Asian, had corrupted us to make our proposal.

I am happy to note that finally the NMC is being revived today. It will be incorporated in our infrastructure modernisation programme. It will dovetail the building of our machine tools capacity. Through it we shall seek self-sufficiency in providing spare parts for our railroad system.

Another area of jobs creation is in housing construction. The demand for affordable houses for the working and middle classes in our urban areas is very high. We shall invest in affordable housing, engage in urban renewal the Shanghai way and bring new look to our towns and cities while giving modern habitation to our people.

Manual workers, contractors, masons, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, civil engineers, draftsmen, building material manufacturers, road builders, lawyers, salesmen, real estate agents, insurers, housing finance companies, security firms and landscape experts will all find jobs.

When people have money in their pockets they are empowered to spend it so as to meet their needs and wants. The very act of spending money also creates jobs for other people. For example, on the surface of it, it may not make much sense to build a shoe factory in the middle of a pastoral area where people depend purely on subsistence pastoralism. Such people will have no money to buy the shoes. But the factory so built can create jobs for them while the shoes are sold far away to people in urban areas who have the money to buy the shoes.

In short, job creation goes hand in hand with a focus on stimulating the productive capacity of our economy in all areas. In agriculture investing in irrigation, water and environmental management will do this. Irrigated agriculture is more productive, puts more people to work and is more sustainable. In manufacturing it will be done not by the traditional focus on big industries but by a shift towards small-scale industries beginning at the village level.

There is a big potential in the crafts industry, in pottery, in making household goods and so on. This is not rocket since: Thailand has already shown us the way with the “one village one product” approach. Our County governments will, of necessity, compete in this regard.

 

The writer is Minister for Medical Services and ODM Secretary General