 Thank you very much for having me yet again. I see you really care about the young people of this nation and that's why every time you have a chance, you get us to come and talk about it. You are most welcome always. And of course next to him is none other than Kaberia Baru who is a political analyst. Thank you so much and welcome to the show. Yes, and I want us to begin with what transpired yesterday in Kishao constituency in Murangaa County where the Changa-Changa team and Keleweka team and apparently staged all over like they were up for fundraising which apparently ended up chaotic. Well, I'll say Kenya has lacked political hygiene for a very long time and yesterday was just a manifestation of the purportedly to bring development to a constituency. When you're the member of parliament, you don't go to the standings. If you don't agree with me, have a parallel event. Call your own people, do a fundraiser. In that case, that constituency will have two fundraisings. So, development will come faster. So, I would like to call out this young leader to ask him to behave with decorum when it comes to public affairs because yesterday there was totally uncalled for causing commotion in church with senior members. That's the worth it can get. So, team Changa-Changa, team Keleweka, it doesn't matter if at the end of the day Monanchi is going to get served. Let's not buy into these shinani guns. They were looking to cause drama, they cause drama. Now they have a tension, we are talking about them. This is not how to do things. Right. Kakabere, as we get your insight on the topic that transpired yesterday, do you think we are fighting or rather we have a supremacy battle between Keleweka and Tanga-Changa? Yes, definitely there is a big supremacy battle and this is something which has been in play for a long time. And it's just like yesterday one of the instances which came up and it was a clear manifestation of the battle which has been there. Looking at the various addresses which has been there from the president and even the deputy president on let's stop the issue of politics especially from the president and focus on delivering fast before we were talking about the 2022. And we have seen a very clear division between the members of parliament allied to different sides and each one of them tried to call others' names basing on this one after money, this one is after this and that. But not looking at even the yesterday's incidents, what happened in Kiharu, I think where did Nyoro and Maena commander clash. We can see a lot of political and hyginess has really put it very clear and this is something which is very unfortunate bearing in mind even the place where they were, it's even in a church and this shows how even the church has been so much misused to be even the podium whereby the politicians are settling this course. And we have seen this not only in Kiharu, it's also happened in Vika at some time whereby we had clashes of members of parliament aligned on those different missions. So this is not just a responsibility of even the politicians only but also the church elders and the leaders, this is the real time they stamp on the authority and be able to control the political atmosphere by who they give the mic and stand on the podium on the basis of politics. Is the church justified to bring in political politicians rather than to give them the microphones during church services? In fact, let me say I fellowship with Catholic church. Even the bishop or the cardinal on this regard I would be very strict on this. Sometime we hand the bishop of Anglican church who really stood and said that we don't want to have the politicians misusing the podium but people do not buy that well. But what you need, it's not to say that politicians should not be given the microphone. But we need to have a very good moderation on how and even when to do that. If they have come for addressing, if they have come to fellowship let them come just as the way the normal members are and let them not take much of the time of the church there is that being after the service and let it be clear that this is not a political podium. If you have to give us contribution of that well and good don't play politics with it. If it is tight there is a very even clear structure even in the Bible now people shouldn't tight. You should not create a short of that which will definitely create a lot of tension. I wouldn't want us to dwell so much on the church aspect but I wouldn't want us to dwell on the part of the Jubilee party and I'd like probably you, Muthiora, can use this microphone this one is breaking a little bit. Muthiora, I see that you have some point that you'd like to air and this is my question. Both Kiela, Wakintanga, Tanga of course are all of them from Jubilee regime. Do you think that Jubilee is heading for a downfall? Well, we know that Jubilee was formed to win the 2017 election. It did that. It served its purpose. That's the fate of all political parties in Kenya. They are formed just to win elections. So to expect that Jubilee is going to offer leadership to this nation it's like expecting to get water out of a stone. It's not going to happen. Jubilee served its purpose. We have this government running. It's not going to be there going forward. In 2022 Jubilee will not be what we see it today. Alright, so Jubilee is heading for a downfall? It's not headed for a downfall. Jubilee is down as we speak. Alright. You can see the kind of debate we've had in parliament where we couldn't even agree on revenue allocation and yet Jubilee has majority in both sanate and parliament and yet they could not agree to move the nation forward. One house had to pull back. If Jubilee was not down, that would not have happened. Alright. I'm prompted to ask this question. Ruto has at several occasions said that he's going to vie for presidency and you said that Jubilee actually is on a downfall. Where do you think Ruto will stand in terms of the political party he'll go with? Well, my thought is before 2022 we will see new alliances being formed. Alright. We will see new parties, there will be new players. The deputy president will not have the Jubilee party as we know it heading into 2022. That I can guarantee you. We have the BBI coming up and he's not sitting pretty. We have all these other noise. That's not going to give him a chance to have the Jubilee ticket as Uhuru Kenyatta had it in 2017. I didn't want to studio so much on because I know we can talk about the building bridges initiative that you've just mentioned. But I want us to dive to the main topic of the day. Of course shifting gears all the way to now, the current wage bill. And some of the reports that I have here are quite shocking because when we look at Kenya currently, its wage bill rose from 5 billion to the 2013-2014 of course financial year. And currently we are standing at 7 plus US dollar billion wage bill. Where do you think we are headed when we are looking at this? Because already statistics says that more alarming fact is that the gross domestic product ratio stands at 8.2% which is high above the global recommended rate by 0.79. Already we are far much higher above by 0.75. We should be worried as a nation. Because if we were able to run Kenya back then with the kind of debt to GDP ratio that we had you remember when Kibaki was living office we were doing less than 2 trillion. But right now in just 7 years it has risen to almost 6 trillion. It was 1.7 trillion. 1.7 trillion. Now if in 7 years, if since independence we only got to 1.7 trillion but in 7 years we have risen to almost 6 trillion what does that tell you? That tells you that the kind of leadership we have today is one that is not worried or does not care about our future. So as Kenyans we should be worried. We should look to correct costs because things are not rosy at all. You've had people cry that the economy is tough and indeed it's tough. It's only good for a few lucky people and then those others who are corrupt and well connected but for the majority the economy is hitting them hard. Numbers do not lie. And just like you have mentioned there is the recommended percentage of debt to GDP debt to revenue which should never go beyond 35%. For Kenya it's over 55% right now. All the revenue that we are collecting through our taxes is going into paying wages and salaries and repaying debt. When are we going to develop our nation if we keep on this pattern? Kabere want you to respond or rather give your reactions on this. The government has stated that from now henceforth rather from this year they will be giving out three year contract to any person that probably is by any chance given a government office. My question is will we manage, will we solve the issue of the wage bill despite even the three year contract term? Well I think the wage bill in Kenya is really ballooning and it's a serious crisis and I think what the government was trying to do through the public service board is to bring in a short term measures at least to be able to cut that as even they are trying to think of the long term. But what I'm trying to say is that this is not the way to go if you want to think of really managing the wage bill because this you are thinking of those people already entering the public sector and right now we are having 800,000 an estimate of 800,000 sorry public servants. So if you just say that anyone will be employed will be on a three year contract it means that those who are already in employment you have not been able to put a measure even to be able to control that. So I think the country this is the high time even the leadership should be more futuristic and should even be now looking at various ways on how to be able to manage this because it's very unfortunate when we have huge chunk of the budget going on the recurrent budget that is being meant of salaries and there's no economy which has ever been developed by the recurrent budget it's actually the development budget which should be higher. So I think the government it's the high time they just think of even be able to manage the wage bill by even trying to enhance and strengthen the Salaries and Enumeration Commission which has come up with so many measures but which are not being implemented because of even the lack of goodwill we have hand of duplication of various position in government. You mentioned about lack of goodwill. Yes. Who would you directly say that probably this is the person or rather this is the particular institution that has failed? Definitely it's the executive from the presidency and looking at the various aspects which play when it comes even to the SRC because we have hand of situation whereby the recommendation even not really taken into account. So when we talk of goodwill it means it should come from the top institution from the presidency trickling down and this will also be a good example to the governor because we've also seen a tazo between the governor and even the SRC trying to say that we have some autonomy to protect and so we can be able to increase salary employ more people as we want. So I think there should be a lot of goodwill and also again looking at that the duplication of positions in government. We've seen so many positions and so many like talk of even the nominated and the number of MCS we have in the country a very big number consuming almost 2 billion in the of the budget. Is it something that we really need? So those are the questions, the provocative questions we should be now having as an issue. Probably coming to you Muthiora. The issue he has mentioned about the issue of duplications and these are affected it usually emerges when we are talking about the wage bill in the debt that currently Kenya has. Let's have a look at it from this way. Can merging of public entities and even the duplication try to can these really solve the issue of the wage bill? It can and it will if we do it right because what you do is you pay two people to do the same job obviously that does not make sense. So to get out of our situation first we need to eliminate redundancy and duplication of roles. That's getting it right but then that's not even the problem. The problem with Kenya is number one currently as things are we lack vision. It's not clear what this government wants to achieve. We know that the biggest problem for this nation right now is poverty. That's fooled by unemployment. Now when the top leadership in their wisdom decides to create positions such as the CAS it's not a three-year term job they created and they did this across all ministries. Some they even provided two and then you come and say when we are hiring and when they are hiring young people it's you and me they say they will give you a three-year contract. Is this a government that's serious on fixing what the problem really is? They are just playing games and rewarding their cronies. This is not the way to go and we should see whatever effort they make to hoodwink us and call it as such. All right. I was trying to look at some of the countries that I have tried to merge and deal with the issue of the ghost workers and one among them is Tanzania and Uganda, just our border countries and Tanzania workers reduced the wage bill to 2.47.2 million that is US dollars last year that is in 2018 all the way from 248. The question is not about reduction we should be asking ourselves are we getting value fast and foremost the truth is we are not so what can we do to increase productivity of the country of the persons? Of the persons already employed if you go to a government office you can be sure that number one they don't even put in the time they are supposed to put in and then even when they are at work they were not competently hired there is a skill mismatch people are not able to execute their roles because then the wrong field the wrong posting the nepotism, tribalism that comes into play when you are hiring so the question we should be looking to answer is do we have the right people in the right jobs so that they can create value because the government does not create employment for the nation what they do is are the people who have been hired through our taxes helping to create that environment it's okay if the wage bill balloons but then the GDP is also growing commensurate to whatever we are putting in to pay these civil servants Alright Kabiria do you think we are going anywhere in terms of growth with the current wage bill? Well when you talk about the growth of our nation there are various aspects even on the economic perspective that you really look at as one has mentioned is about the GDP then the other thing is now the production when you look at this country Kenya we import more than we even import the level of industrialization actually when you look it has reduced from 12.4% to 8% meaning that most of the industries and the production have declined looking at even the industries which have collapsed the companies which are even closing down and even moving to our neighbouring Ethiopia and other countries so when you want to look at the growth sometimes it's good to know the economic statistics that we even given that we see growth by 4% or by 5% but look at even the reality of the common one inch are we seeing some changes or some even growth even as one inch when you talk about that we look at even at the hospitals the infrastructure and all that so I think in Kenya when we talk about growth we can't see significance growth as maybe we expected and there's a lot of things which are going wrong and there's a lot of stagnation on some sectors so it's the high time that we really look at what are the things which we need to put in order to go leadership and when we get the issue of leadership then the other beings won't have a problem in fixing them when you mentioned that I want us now to look at Kenya's debt and its impact towards our citizens and did you know that the government of Kenya more than exceeding 100,000 shillings that is just an individual more to it did you know that the country incurred 975.8 billion shillings loan in the 2018-2018 financial year well how do we get to all this President Uhuru Kenyatta inherited a public debt of 1.7 trillion shillings in 2013 from the previous regime of President Maiki Baking and from then we have seen several loans borrowed from different countries in seek to achieve what the government says is its goals which apparently have changed over the past few years with the ones that we had from laptops or the way come now to the four goals that the government has and Central Bank of Kenya showed that the current country's public debt expanded by 15.2% which is 0.851 trillion shillings to heat the 5.89 trillion we are headed to 6 trillion public debt I wanted to look at some of the slides I don't know whether the slide is ready according to the Institute of Economic Affairs the report says that China stands at 6 we owe China 637 billion shillings which is 70.6% second in the rank is Japan with 104.7 billion shillings which is 11.7% and then that we have France which stands at 62.2 billion shillings which of 8 is 7% all the way going to Germany we stand at 35 billion shillings which is 3.9% rather Italy which is the fifth one in the rank it's 15.6 billion shillings which is 1.7% I don't want to look as deep into the rest of the countries I want to take your reactions on this well number one I'll tell you we have mismanaged our economy because how on earth do you accumulate such a huge debt from one country you've seen what the percentage is with China that means our leadership was not looking forward you need to diversify that's something we've not done look at that it says we have borrowed our debt portfolio we owe 70.6% to China so if things today did not go right and we messed up our relationship with China and they said you have to pay us today we fold up as a nation now this is something we should not do I'm glad the economic hitman we had in the CS Henry Rotich he's on his way to committee because this is one person who has done this nation a great disservice while he was a CS our debt moved from 1.7 all the way to to 6 trillion it's actually over 6 trillion this is a government that's not very keen even to give you the right figures according to the government it says 5.8 now yes the same government that says that the unemployment amongst the youth is less than 20% so these figures when they are given to you you have to take them with a pinch of salt now obviously when all your revenue goes into recurrent expenditure that's debt payment wages you're not sitting pretty we need to correct the cost that this nation is going on to and unfortunately we start to make a lot of noise and this I'm urging all Kenyans out there and especially the young people who can make sense of what these numbers are they will not take corrective action and will keep sinking deeper into these moras and Kenya will never be great alright, I won't bury before we take before we even take your insight on these or rather you take on these figures I have a question about UK has been a long time business partner since independence with the country and apparently it's not in the list or rather on the list what's the take on that this is a very serious issue because UK has been our strong partner from even the colonial era being they were colonial masters but it's very unfortunate that maybe due to some political reasons because we can't see them in the list and I'm seeing political reasons because they have supported us in so many ways from even finding most of the projects even giving the grants but now when it comes to borong I remember there's a time Teresa May was here with a delegation from the place and those are the some of the issues they were trying to explore and I remember very clearly that the president was saying that we are trying to build the relationship or even the business relationship with the UK so I really don't know what exactly made the relationship go bad so about the political interest and always able even to oil the hands of these politicians well knowing that China they have a very crafty way of doing their own things and you see even the delegation they had called on the president of Africa with very good incentives and all that so that's something which we really need to be very careful on even the incentives which they are giving for us to take the loans because these loans are not the grants so they are making some good money out of that Alright and I want to take your views on this particular issue because when you mention about debt it has to come along with collaterals apparently the government has not become clear of what has been given out it's alleged that among them is JKA of which it's on allegation as it stands but the government keeps on saying that they'll air out, they'll give to the public some of the collaterals they have given In December the president said he was going to disclose all the details about the SGR when he was speaking at State House in Mombasa to date he has yet to give those details Nine months down the line Yes, which means there are some things that are not very nice that have been hidden in the fine print of the contracts we've entered into with China so talking about collaterals again like I say we should be very very worried about how our government is doing business you've mentioned JKA it's possible that some of our national assets could have been put as collaterals unfortunately we do not know the finer details of the contracts we've entered into or these leaders have entered into so what I need for us to do is to remain vigilant we need to keep asking these questions when these leaders come to church to politic we should tell them to sit down we should tell them to tell us what exactly it is they do with the mandate that we gave them because we did not elect them to talk to us we elected them to represent us and when they are not giving information about what contracts they are getting into on our behalf they are failing and we should tell them when they are failing and demand from them that they give us this information so we need to ask our members of parliament to go back to the August house and do duty for this nation before we even talk to you let me ask you we have seen several presidents coming to Kenya of which bilateral trade agreement have been signed we have even learned exactly that's what I wanted to mention when they come here they are not necessarily coming here for our own goods they are coming here for their selfish interests I know about Kenyan government officials who have been given land in the DRC we know that our president has dished out land of course they go there under the disguise that they are representing the people of Kenya but then whatever gains that accrue from such deals are personal they are for themselves they are cronies and they are families our president has given land to South Sudan to Uganda of course these are our business partners but then are these beneficial to us we should not just accept things because we feel like we are in a helpless situation no we are not in a helpless situation what we need to do is to petition our leaders and especially those in parliament that yes we've done 2 years the way that we've done them yes there is the handshake and everything that's going on but then they must remember that they are there because they are supposed to oversight this government they are supposed to represent us they are supposed to be taking care of the interests of the Kenyan people let them canvas these matters in the flow of the house and hold this government to account Beru do you think we as a country we are struggling in terms of leadership in terms of even impact from the leaders yes definitely we are really struggling in terms of leadership because when we talk about leadership it is on the value and the impact to which they are able to create to the people who put them in power and looking at even the various leadership we have especially on the political leadership we have not really been able to get the real value in terms of even the economic development also the social services and even on the political space and this is something which we can be able to see it even at the common grassroots level go even to the common one inch everyone they are really complaining that the economy is unbearable sometime you go even to the public utilities and you don't find the services which should be getting go even to the hospitals we have so many hospitals without drugs we have schools without enough teachers and we've seen even the drought crisis in Kenya at this age of time whereby we have a government in place people dying of hunger or this is not because of the issue of climate as we talk about this is an issue of leadership because with the proper leadership you are able to put up proper team you are able to put up even proper policies which are able to mitigate all these factors and I think this is a problem which we should look at as Kenyans or even who are the people which we entrust with the leadership positions is it based on the financial muscles is it based on the way for them, the family, the denasties and all that is the high time we will look at the marking scheme we are having to be able to elect the leaders that we put in office I don't want to talk so much about disaster management which has been a main issue for the past few few few years in the country in terms of drought strengthening areas some of the countries in the country but I want us to stick to the topic of the day and I'm looking at the country as by distance do you think we have the ability and the capability to pay the monies it is by 2030 when we are supposed to have full feed of a vision 2030 well Kenya is a very wealthy nation Alex if you may recall we recently exported crude we have a lot of other minerals that are yet to be explored and harnessed so as they can benefit this nation he just gave you the numbers about our manufacturing dwindling how can our manufacturing be doing so badly when we have such a big number of people who are unemployed we just don't have our priorities right Kenyans have been paying taxes if you look at the KRA records there is not a single year when the numbers have not gone up which means we have the potential we've been building capacity but unfortunately we've been destroying value through this thing we call corruption these thivari the stealing the looting of public resources is what's hurting this nation so the vision 2030 blueprint it can still be actualized we've gone slower than we could have because we concentrated on things we should never have focused on the short term goals some leaders want to show that we are delivering but in the long run we can still meet a lot of the targets that we had set for ourselves in the vision 2030 blueprints do you think the jubilee government will manage to probably fulfill their four goals? not at all if a simple goal such as the one they said about delivering stadiums they have not delivered even a single stadium seven years since they made that promise how do you expect they are going to provide housing for over 50 million Kenyans how do you expect that the dream of universal healthcare is going to come through but we must keep exerting pressure on them because manufacturing needs to work young people need jobs we need to come out of poverty Kenyans are ready to work and the environment looking at our level of education our enthusiasm passion investors are ready to come as long as the government is willing to provide the right kind of an environment many thanks to the implement for making it here but before we wind up I want to give each and everyone a few seconds to just give you a parting shot thank you so much and my parting shot will be so specific to the viewers because I believe that each and every person has a responsibility when it comes to the direction the country will take and now as the time we even contemplating on even the next elections this is the high time we now change our thoughts on terms of leadership so that we are able to give an opportunity to even young leaders with vision not even looking necessarily as where they come from so it's the high time as the young people and even as the Kenyan people put into leadership people with vision and also people with the love and kindness for the humanity as opposed even to people with the monies and all that and that's how we'll be able to change most of the things which are affecting this country well I would like to appeal to all Kenyans and especially the young people that we've gotten to a stretch where we must stay walk you saw yesterday what happened in Muranga what matter that it's a church politicians are going to out do it other just to capture the limelight let us be vigilant let us remember that it's not too late we can recall these leaders that clouds has been activated we are within that threshold let us get value for our money there is not accession without representation let us demand the very best from our leaders thank you for making it here and we much appreciate it as well we look forward of course to have some other engagement some other day many thanks there has been youth and politics looking at some of the things and some of the statistics that we have in the country relating to the wage bill and of course the public debt that is everyday skyrocketing and affecting some of the things that we look at in terms of infrastructure and everything that relates to the economy my name is Karanja Alex many thanks for keeping it here this is Y254 many thanks