In Ruto’s mansion, workers quarrel with their tools, and that’s healthy

By Peter Kimani

Kenya: The narrative that’s emerging about the Jubilee Government is that it cares for its citizens from womb to tomb, and so actively promotes free maternity healthcare as one of its milestones.

This week, they inaugurated the welfare fund for the elderly somewhere in Murang’a, so that those who are over the age of 65 and are living in extreme poverty will access Sh2,000 monthly.

This has led to the inadvertent fulfilment of the criticism about the Government policies as geared towards creating work for the youth, but letting the elderly pick all the spoils, or to use the expression in vogue, kazi kwa vijana, pesa kwa wazee.

But Deputy President Will Ruto will not let such expressions gain credence. He thinks the loud murmurs at every Government move is a sign that things are actually getting done.

“If nothing is being done, there would be no grumblings,” he offered, “What you hear are noises as on a construction site, as one fundi (workman) says: ‘Give me the saw, while another says, bring that stone,’” he said, as old men flashed toothless grins, and those who still have voices voiced a chorus in agreement.

Ruto’s analogy of nation building as a construction site is appropriate, only that if he had the construction of his official mansion in mind, then the more apt explanation is that workers often quarrel with their tools, and that’s not to imply their workmanship is deficient.

If one were to pursue that line further, then it is a safe bet that workers who often quarrel with their tools also argue about their pay.

It is a most delightful sight that some Kenyans must be familiar with: No matter the sums of money involved, hardly do workmen leave a construction site without a dispute.

More often than not, it is the contractor who is unable to balance his books, and a worker’s wage cannot be somehow traced, or a contractor disappears with the whole loot and the builders agonise about the valuables that would be adequate recompense for their labours.

Either way, the house owner is left counting his losses because his money is gone and his property vandalised.

But the problem assailing Ruto’s and by extension, the Jubilee’s mansion construction is that there seems to be little traction between the architectural drawings and the edifice that their workmen are putting up.

As one friend keeps reminding me, the house that most fundis want to build is the one they always wanted to build for their wives, so their interpretations of the drawings are often limited to that vision.

So beyond the Deputy President’s mansion that has gobbled hundreds of millions of taxpayer shillings, and which remains unoccupied to date, there are other constructions that are eliciting more opprobrium from opposition politicians.

There is the railway line that some want derailed before its construction can commence, apparently because the builders do not seem to have the requisite experience or tools to undertake the job.

Some say the question of money has not been fully dispensed, and that our children will have to pay that bill sometime in the future.

There is some comfort, however, that there will be some inches of rail – fragments of which were laid during its launch – and that it could have been worse.

After all, Kenyans continue to pay billions of shillings for the KenRen fertiliser industry that was never put up, and paid billions to the Anglo-Leasing goons who purported to have built a forensic lab on the tree-tops of the Karura forest.