Inside the 40 days of broken promises

Chief administrative secretary Ministry of health Dr.Mercy Mwangangi, address the press on 21st April 2020 at Afya house in Nairobi. [Edward Kiplimo,Standard]

Forty days after the announcement of the first novel coronavirus case in Kenya, citizens are still grappling with the best ways to keep themselves safe and keep the virus at bay.

Apart from conducting tests and issuing an array of directives, little else has been done by the government for the majority whose taxes heavily fund its operations.

For six weeks, the government’s response has been a series of unmet promises whose delivery date keeps being pushed with every press conference. 

Two weeks into the pandemic, frontline healthcare workers were promised adequate personal protective equipment (PPEs). To date, many of them are struggling to get the correct equipment to go about their work.

Kenyans were also promised mass testing. This has not happened, with the State beating a hasty retreat on Sunday, clarifying that only a select section of the population would be tested.

There were promises of fully equipped isolation centres in the counties. To date, governors are struggling to convert classrooms and ill-equipped hospitals to fit the bill of what would medially pass as an isolation centre.

A virtual Council of Governors’ meeting held yesterday revealed just how dire the country’s current and future preparedness is when it comes to the Covid-19 fight after it emerged that 40 days later, not a single cent has been sent to the counties.  

Even with some Sh5.23 billion in aid money, governors are yet to receive any cash to tackle the disease. In fact, they have been left worse off, with Sh40 billion initially meant to go to Universal Health Coverage being taken back to the Exchequer.

Yet, all this while, there have been collections from well-wishers, corporates and State agencies totalling to more than Sh10 billion.

As the governors were meeting, the Covid-19 fund released a press statement. So far, nearly Sh918 million in cash donations had been collected.

“Funds and donations continue to be received and these will be updated in due course ... the board seeks to reaffirm that the donations will be utilised to support the government’s efforts in the supply of medical facilities and equipment, and support for the vulnerable communities,” read the statement by board chair Jane Karuku.

There was no mention of the Sh7 billion from the Central Bank or the Sh2 billion from proceeds of crime given up by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Voicing concerns

Now, Kenyans on social media and in public spaces are voicing their concerns on the government’s response to the crisis, and whether it will change its daily addresses from status updates to forums on the provision of more tangible solutions to what is turning out to be an existential threat to the country.

Lawyer Ahmednasir Abdullahi said: “What has been government’s strategy in response to Covid-19? What has government been doing with resources mobilised because health workers are boycotting work due to lack of equipment like PPEs?”

Even with these concerns, former anti-corruption chief John Githongo believes that the biggest threat to Kenyan lives is not the ongoing pandemic; it is something more dangerous. Something whose damage can span generations.

“The biggest threat we face as a country now is a lack of imagination by those in charge of the country. A lack of imagining ways we can learn from this and lift ourselves up from where we are to where we want to be,” Mr Githongo says.

Githongo argues that to date, despite what he calls timely interventions at the beginning of the pandemic in the country, the government has shown little indication that things will change within its ranks, and that confronted by the corona threat, it was ready to radically shift its thinking.

“There has been no indication of a paradigm shift within its ranks that it is doing things different. That as a country we have well laid-out plans to bring back the economy or healthcare or education or tourism,” he says.

For many, it seems to be same-old-same-old in government, with a lack of proper accountability or communication to the public.

And this, others say, has been one of the main reasons interventions do not seem to work as well as they should. On April 6, President Uhuru Kenyatta announced a partial lockdown  aimed at limiting the movement of people out of or into four counties – Nairobi, Kwale, Kilifi and Mombasa – that had the highest numbers of Covid-19 infections.

But these directives have over time been flouted by a public that was initially enthusiastic about playing its part in the grander scheme of things.

“People need to know and see where you are taking them. Directives need to make sense to them in the long run,” political commentator Herman Manyora says. “Eventually the public will rebel.”

A day after the presidential directive that prohibited non-essential movement out and into the counties, dozens of individuals were caught on camera trying to make their way into the areas they had been cut out from.

“It is not easy to enforce a lockdown. This can only be possible if the people trust that the government has their backs. If not, the people will not adhere to a lockdown … full or partial,” Githongo says.

Further, the public health sector has been gradually militarised, with those suspected to have Covid-19 being abducted from their homes in the middle of the night to be sequestered in hospitals, hostels and other State facilities pending testing.

On March 6, a suspected Covid-19 patient was whisked out of his house in what he described to The Standard as a “kidnapping”. And the would-be patient was billed for the possibility that he could be sick.

Thousands more have gone through what he has gone through. In Siaya, the family of an individual whose death was attributed to the virus was publicly shamed, with the deceased hastily buried at night. After this, other family members who would be crucial in contact tracing simply fled from local health officers, dealing the ministry’s attempts at managing locally transmitted cases a blow.

This came on the back of a dusk-to-dawn curfew introduced to the public through the brutality of a bloodthirsty police force.

Auto pilot

These events have slowly eroded the initial goodwill that Health CS Mutahi Kagwe had marshalled.

And in a country whose workforce largely depends on daily wages, the effects of the curfew have been devastating, and there is uncertainty on when a semblance of normalcy will resume. 

“I am not convinced we are dealing with the effects of the pandemic as we ought to. We need a higher level of thinking and not the tunnel approach we currently have,” Mr Manyora says. “We are looking at the response through the eyes of Mutahi Kagwe alone. Everything else looks to be on auto pilot.”

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the world economy is projected to grow by 2.4 per cent, down from an estimated 2.9 per cent in 2019, the slowest pace since 2009, during the 2008-09 financial crisis.

The Treasury has projected that Kenya’s economy will grow by a revised rate of 2.5 per cent this year on account of the devastating impact of Covid-19.

But critics argue that for the first time since independence, the country will experience negative growth or recession, killing whatever hopes of a revival the already fledgling economy harboured.

“We are looking at health interventions, but the economic jolt will be incredible,” Githongo says.

Already, several firms in the hospitality and aviation sectors have sacked thousands of workers, with the surviving ones staring at painful pay cuts. Other companies have shut down.

“We are trying to keep as many jobs as possible,” Mike Macharia, CEO of the Kenya Association of Hotel Keepers and Caterers, says. “But if things don’t change, we may be forced to look at job losses for 300,000 people.”

All this may grind to halt now, with industry players looking at the promise of a Sh500 million post-corona kitty by Tourism CS Najib Balala. He is in good company when it comes to making promises.

Mixed messaging

To date the public has been treated to mixed messaging from the Health ministry on mass testing, proven by other countries to be key in managing the pandemic. After weeks of promises of embarking on mass testing, the ministry on Sunday backtracked, clarifying that the government had decided to instead focus on testing high-risk populations.

“We have just seen the launch of this on TV, but our members in the counties are yet to be tested,” Seth Panyako, the secretary general of the Kenya National Union of Nurses said. “We have had no reports of testing elsewhere.”

To date, the country has tested just over 14,400 samples in the 42 days we have had the virus, translating to 342 tests per day. All this from kits donated by well-wishers.

Health Chief Administrative Secretary Mercy Mwangangi yesterday explained there is a shortage of some items used to collect oral and nasal swabs, “that is why our numbers in terms of sample tested has been reducing”.

In Kibera, an informal settlement in Nairobi that has been mentioned by health officials as one of the places that would benefit from intensified testing, this is yet to start. Yet, the science is pretty clear now. We must test as many people as possible or learn the ravages of the virus the hard way – like Italy, USA and Britain, the worst-hit countries in terms of cases and fatalities.

And something else is missing in these trying times.

“We have fallen far short of offering any hope to the country,” Reverend Timothy Njoya says.