EDITORIAL: Splurging Sh7.15bn on foreign travel in 3 months unfair to Kenyans

The Controller of Budget has, as usual, published an audit report of how the executive spent budgets for the early parts of the current financial year.

And as sure as the sun rises from the east and sets in the west, bureaucrats have approached public cash and the trust bestowed on them as custodians of the public good, as an opportunity to indulge in unmerited expenditure.

No day passes these days without media headlines lamenting heavy government borrowing taking up large chunks of tax revenue.

But bureaucrats and their political godfathers have never known how to cut their coats according to the cloth.

In the first 90 days of the 2025-26 budget, the government splurged Sh7.15 billion on foreign travel alone at a time prudent use of whatever little available could be spread and even redirected to parts of the budget that had faced shortfalls that could hamper delivery.

President William Ruto has time and again directed civil servants to manage public money in the fashion they would manage their own home budgets. But looks like those exhortations fall on deaf ears.

The President should go a step further and surcharge culprits who ignore his instructions or alternatively slash those budgets so as to leave only cash necessary for the very key functions.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Simplicity of all things is the hardest to be copy.” —Irish writer, playwright and politician Richard Steele was baptised on March 12, 1672