Daadab MP slams Ruto for spending billions on foreign travels
By Mary Ouko, September 26, 2023
Daadab Member of Parliament (MP) Farah Maalim has reprimanded President William Ruto’s administration over the ‘misuse’ of funds.
Speaking to a local media house, the lawmaker slammed the President and other officials for spending exorbitant amounts of funds on foreign trips at the expense of taxpayers.
The legislator also faulted the government for failing to effectively tame money wastage across different government entities and stressed that the government needs to curb the rate of foreign trips by all means to reduce expenditure.
He also implored the government to channel the funds towards developmental projects that would benefit citizens.
“We have to curb travel by all arms of government. The billions of Kenyan shillings we spend on travels…the President travelled to New York the last time how many people went with him? Big number. Wherever we go there is so much wastage you can’t imagine.
“Counties are doing benchmarking and sending people outside the country. What do you need to benchmark and spend a couple of millions on three, or four people? Everybody… the Executive, Judiciary, so much wastage in this country,” he added.
Maalim additionally called out counties accusing them of misusing funds meant for developmental projects through the payment of ghost workers.
“There was no rationalization in the recruitment policies of almost all counties in the country. People earn salaries and do nothing. Most of them are in Nairobi there are even some who live outside the country,” he added.
Further, the politician called out the government for underpaying community health promoters while squandering finances.
He claimed that it was unfair that the government was only paying the aforementioned workers Ksh5,000 when there were adequate resources.
“With the current rate of inflation paying community health promoters Ksh5,000 per month is insulting. There is massive wastage in government and even now we have not been able to tame the wastage, we need to rationalize that for us to to save money to take care of the promoters,” he stated.