CS's 'Budget for the rich' pushes poor to the brink

A few miles from the resplendence of Parliament where Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich delivered his budget on Thursday, Deborah Mwandagina, deputy headteacher of a primary school in Nairobi’s Mukuru slum, is unimpressed.

Her dilapidated, overcrowded and underresourced Kwa Njenga school has around 2,000 pupils from the sprawling informal settlement in Nairobi, but for years she has struggled to provide the quality education they deserve.

Mr Rotich may have announced increased spending on education on Thursday last week, she said, but his other policies could make the impoverished families her students come from more vulnerable.

“It’s good for the school if more funds are given. We have over 100 students in each class and need to build classrooms. We need trained staff for our children with special needs and secured funding for lunchtime meals,” said Mwandagina.

“But if the prices of basic items go up, it makes you worry. Already these children are from poor families, often they have single mothers or their parents are HIV positive, or the grandparent is looking after them.”

CS Rotich announced increased investment in four priority areas in his 2018/19 budget speech - manufacturing, food security, affordable housing and universal health coverage.

Basic good

The education budget will rise by 17 per cent, and the rich will help fund spending to help the poor through a “Robin Hood tax” of 0.05 per cent on financial transactions of over Sh500,000.

But Rotich also proposed a 16 per cent VAT on basic goods such maize flour, kerosene, cooking gas and bread and announced plans to toll roads and raise licence fees for small businesses.

Newspaper headlines said the Government was raiding “poor pockets” and called the budget “Kenya’s most painful”, while citizens have taken to social media complaining of public corruption and the failure to target Kenya’s most wealthy.

“Robin Hood robbed the rich to give the poor. He didn’t rob the poor to give the rich, nor rob the rich to pocket the cash,” tweeted one user under the handle @AlfredKOmbudo.

Kenya’s economy has grown on average by five per cent annually over the last decade, but the benefits have not been equally distributed, and the gap between rich and poor is rising, say campaigners.

The number of super-rich in Kenya is among the fastest growing in the world.  

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