With all this travelling amid near-default due to a ballooning debt crisis fuelled by years of wastefulness, it was inevitable that the public would notice and take issue. Data for first 12 months of President William Ruto regime showed a significant increase in travel spending, especially over the nine months of Ruto’s presidency over which Ksh1.2 billion has been spent by the president’s office on travel only.

This large spending is what the president’s advisor David Ndii diagnosed as an ‘itchy feet problem’, admitting that the “Government is wasteful”.

This criticism, however, is not new. The previous administration where Ruto was the deputy president faced similar criticism over their protracted trips abroad. A Citizen TV report dated December 6, 2015, found that then-President Uhuru Kenyatta had travelled more times in one and a half years than President Mwai Kibaki had throughout his 10 years in office between 2002 and 2013.

The script used to defend those frequent trips reads exactly like the current one. Uhuru Kenyatta’s cabinet turned to ask Kenyans to instead see the benefits of the travel. The then Foreign Affairs CS and current presidential advisor Monica Juma called the criticism ‘hype’.

Dr Monica Juma serves in President Ruto’s government as an advisor on defence and diplomacy.

“The president has a duty to grow opportunities for this country and to reduce the risk that we face,” Juma said, “Our prosperity lies beyond our borders.” Ruto chose a similarly dismissive label of the current criticism calling it ‘noise’ and declaring that he is Kenya’s chief agent looking for employment for Kenyans. “I have heard people making noise asking why I travelled. That’s the president’s job, I am the chief ambassador of Kenya,” Ruto averred.

But such criticism is founded on frustrations shared by Kenyans. Inflation has been increasing as income has been shrinking for most Kenyans since 2019 according to the Kenya Economic Report 2023. Prices of basic commodities like food, electricity and fuel have been increasing significantly over the past year. Taxes have eaten even deeper into the pockets of average Kenyans as a raft of new policies have been implemented by the Finance Act 2023.

Devolved extravagance

Enormous travel costs extend beyond the national level. Counties incur substantial expenses primarily consisting of domestic travel costs which together with foreign travel totalled Ksh15.4 billion in 2022/23.

At a glance, one notices that Turkana, Migori, and Nairobi’s travel expenses exceeded the Ksh800 million mark in financial year 2022/23. Turkana had the highest of all 47 counties and the only one to breach the Ksh1 billion mark. Turkana’s total travel expenditure totalled Ksh1.2 billion, most of it domestic.

Travel aside, Turkana County has been under scrutiny after the County Public Accounts and Investments Committee (CPAIC) blew the whistle on what it called a ‘crime scene’ with stalled projects, corruption and financial mismanagement despite Ksh100 billion pouring into the country over the past 10 years. The damning revelation called for an investigation into expenditure during the decade under Josphat Nanok’s governorship that ended in 2022.

But as that inquiry commences, the Controller of Budget implementation review report for counties offers a glimpse of the blatant disregard of policies after more than 63 county executive officers attended a peace forum in Ethiopia, way above the limit of seven according to travel policy. “The maximum number of delegates inclusive of staff should not exceed 7,” the report states. “It is therefore noted that three out of the eight foreign trips sampled, delegates have surpassed the limit.”

That trip of 63 to the Stakeholders Peace Forum in Ethiopia cost the county over Ksh20.5 million. The other two trips to Uganda took a combined 44 staff to a meeting and conference that cost the county more than Ksh11 million. Turkana County spent over Ksh39 million on foreign travel and over Ksh1 billion on local travel. But there is no breakdown for the Ksh1 billion spent locally.

The Controller of Budget expressed similar concerns with Migori’s total travel expenditure which is the second highest of all 47 counties. These cost the county over Kshs 923 million in 2022/23. The Controller of Budget flagged three foreign trip delegations by county assembly members that exceeded the seven-person limit. Migori County spent over Kshs 13 million on these trips. 15 other counties were flagged for having larger delegations to foreign countries than policies allow, further demonstrating the fiscal irresponsibility of county governments that is eventually reflected in expenditure reports.

Interestingly, Mombasa County did not provide details of its foreign travel expenditure of Ksh125 million. “The County did not provide details of the reported expenditure on foreign travel costs,” Controller of Budget notes in the 2022/23 budget implementation review report. An issue that Mombasa’s County Secretary Jeizan Faruk promised to look at.

In a phone interview, Faruk clarified that air tickets and taxis are what is accounted for by counties, hence the travel expenditure detailed in the Controller of Budget reports. Per diems, however, are not accounted for. “It depends, not all the areas get per diems,” Faruk explained.

Controlling travel

The government made a move to reign in travel expenditure after a massive public outcry. Besides pushing back on criticism, Ruto announced that he had slashed travel expenditure by almost Ksh11 billion. But this is a pronouncement that’s yet to materialise in actual reports. In addition, the government, through the office of the Head of Public Service Felix Koskei, adjusted foreign travel policies for civil servants by reducing the size of their delegations and suspending non-essential travel.

Citing reduced resources Koskei explained that it “Has necessitated the need to scale down and prioritise spending, focusing on the critical operations and activities that are essential to service delivery to the citizen”. Effectively suspending benchmarking trips, study visits, training, conferences and exhibitions requiring foreign travel by government officials.

Because of this the president, first lady, deputy president and prime cabinet secretaries’ delegation is slashed by half. Cabinet secretaries, governors, principal secretaries and CEOs of state corporations can now only travel with a delegation not exceeding two and at least one of them has to be a technical specialist in the subject of the foreign engagement.

Whether government officials will adhere to these regulations remains to be seen. Travel is just one item in the extravagant budget the government puts forward yearly. As frustration mounts over the rising cost of living and mistrust between the government and its citizenry worsens, any talk of austerity measures will do little to assuage the discontent.

• A Tell Media report / By Tom Mukhwana / Reproduced with permission of African Uncensored