President Uhuru Kenyatta team blocks new Jubilee projects

Sixteen months to the elections, President Uhuru’s Cabinet has taken the painful decision to freeze new projects.

The action is informed by the need to concentrate on completing ongoing projects and is seen as an attempt to address the perception that the Jubilee government is promising too much but delivering too little.

The drastic decision comes on the back of revenue shortfalls and soaring debt occasioned by grand projects like the Sh300 billion standard gauge railway, which Uhuru’s government is keen to complete by June, next year ahead of the General Election.

President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto. Uhuru’s Cabinet has taken the painful decision to freeze new projects as an attempt to address the perception that the Jubilee government is promising too much but delivering too little. (PHOTO: COURTESY)

The Government has frozen new projects to concentrate on completing the ongoing ones.

The decision taken at the three-day Cabinet retreat in Naivasha chaired by President Uhuru Kenyatta could signal budgetary constraints and the need to ensure available resources fully finance the ongoing projects.

Earlier, the President had asked Cabinet secretaries to ensure all Jubilee projects are implemented as they are critical to his re-election alongside his deputy William Ruto.

Yesterday, State House spokesman Manoah Esipisu explained the State will direct its resources to the remaining and ongoing projects with a focus on completing them before the country goes to the polls next year.

This means the projects spelt out in the Jubilee manifesto in 2013 and which have not started will be abandoned. Likely to be left in limbo following the new directive is Jubilee’s promise to build five sport stadia in Kisumu, Mombasa, Eldoret, Nakuru and Garissa.

The major projects that the Government is currently undertaking include the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), the free laptops for schools and health equipment for counties.

The fate of the next phase of the modern rail to Malaba with a branch line to Kisumu is also unclear.

Other unfulfilled pledges, as per the Jubilee manifesto, include the expansion of existing international airports - Mombasa, Kisumu, Eldoret, and airstrips  - and creation of a network of county airstrips to promote trade. Also promised is the establishment of institutes of technology in every ward and free milk for every primary school-going child.

The Government listed the projects that it is keen to deliver, including the Sh38 billion managed equipment services programme, which Esipisu said would continue.

He said seven hospitals out of the 98 targeted have been fully refurbished and equipped, while dozens others would be equipped in the next 12 months.

On the forthcoming elections, the Cabinet resolved to support and strengthen various IEBC programmes.

“The Cabinet will fund a number of IEBC programmes to make sure the elections run without any hitch,” he said.

On education, the spokesman said the Government was committed to attaining a 100 per cent transition of students from primary to secondary schools.

“The challenge is complex as we need to build thousands of new classrooms and we will then need to put money into making day secondary schools entirely free,” he said.

He said the controversial laptops project was back on course, adding that the programme had kicked off in 150 pilot schools.

Priority projects

“The Government is committed to making sure all primary schools have laptops and this will be achieved within the next twelve months,” he said.

While the statement didn’t allude to budgetary constraints as informing the freeze, reports indicate the Government is grappling with revenue shortages amid heightened development spending on major projects and programmes.

In the nine months of the current financial year to March, Kenya Revenue Authority said it was only able to collect Sh811 billion against the Government’s target of Sh911 billion.

Addressing the Press after the retreat, Esipisu said the Cabinet had resolved to focus wholly on getting the President’s priority projects done.

The Cabinet also discussed peace and reconciliation, noting that there was need to ensure that the country was fully healed from the ghosts of post-election violence after the collapse of the ICC cases.

Esipisu said the Cabinet agreed that all the integrated IDPs would be compensated.

Additional reporting by Moses Michira