We’re watching out for new policies that change lives

The razzmatazz and the homecomings are over and it is clear that President William Ruto’s second Cabinet is essentially a group of leaders plunged into the deep sea.

Now is the time to swim from the deep sea to the shore and it is going to be no mean feat. There is no ministry that is not in the spotlight. In fact, a few portend so much for Kenyans and the new leadership has to be at the cutting edge with innovative ideas to deliver.

The Cabinet Secretaries who were loud and probably too political from the other ‘side’ are now confronted with the reality of their daily work demands.

At the height of the first round of youth demos, ODM was out telling Kenyans to take the hustler fund and not repay. Now they have the docket, and someone needs to remind the new sheriff in town that it is not just about getting defaulters to pay. No. That is just about floating in the deep sea. The fund is supposed to change lives and boost small businesses so that they can help folks at the bottom of the pyramid into the tax bracket.

You move to the Treasury, and it gets interesting. If the first order of business is to resurrect the 2024 Finance Bill, then even floating in high seas will be problematic.

Clearly, there has to be a focus on dealing with expenditure and cutting down on wastage through a prudent fiscal plan. The new way of doing business cannot be a recall of the very old way of doing business that the same people vehemently opposed! Were they opposing for the sake of opposing or did they have a cogent alternative way of doing things?

Experts have agreed that the issue is not entirely a revenue one but of expenditure, leakages in tax collection, wastage and corruption.

Now, before they start resuscitating a bill they vehemently rejected, can’t they first give us a clearer picture of their plan for dealing with the above issues, especially their plan to curb wastage, deal with budgeted corruption, seal leakages in tax collection and, most importantly, widen the tax bracket and collect more.

Last week, I joined a live conversation hosted by Aga Khan University in Parklands. It was refreshing to learn from experts that collaboration is one area where health financing can help reduce the cost for all Kenyans.

You see, SHIF operates on the principle of the rich paying for the poor, while commercial insurance companies operate on the principle of the healthy paying for the sick. These two operate in silos and the need for collaboration is clear given that there is only a limited number of Kenyans with access to insurance through employers. Well, interesting conversations that tell you the new CS has her work cut out.

But perhaps the most interesting discussion was on disease-based capitation by hospitals. Currently, we are spreading our limited expertise in the medical field quite thin.

Even after the conversation, the tete-a-tete during tea was big on the need for a disease-based capitation, with a critical core of experts in a certain field concentrated in certain hospitals to reduce costs and enhance quality. It is expensive to have a surgeon in a facility where 90 per cent of the patients he sees need zero per cent of his or her expertise.

Whichever ministry we look at, we are watching out for that landmark contribution that will change lives. What will success look like in the next three years? The political class in this broad-based government, whether in the Executive or in Parliament must be alive to the fact that we have not bought the idea of top talent sent to the Executive as individuals.

That does not fly. ODM and Kenya Kwanza are in the Executive. They have everything to drive the policies that change lives for the better and where they need a legislative anchor, they have numbers in Parliament to enact laws. In other words, they can force through anything good for Kenyans

— The writer is a PhD student in Political Communication