President Kenyatta to chair Cabinet retreat at Sagana State Lodge

The Cabinet will on Thursday begin a two-day retreat at Sagana State lodge in Nyeri County to find ways of speeding up Jubilee pillar projects before next year’s elections.

The retreat will be chaired by President Uhuru Kenyatta and would be an opportunity to evaluate the performance of cabinet and principal secretaries.

This will be the third in a series of retreats since President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto were elected into office 2013. The meeting comes at a time the Jubilee administration is facing mounting criticism from the opposition, religious groups and civil society over corruption.

Credible sources within government on Wednesday said the retreat would review the strategies that the administration has put in place to improve services to citizens and implementation of several flagship projects, which would give Mr Kenyatta and his deputy an edge over the opposition in next year’s General Election.

“It will basically be a review of the strategic direction that the government has taken and the results that have been achieved so far,” a top government source told the Nation on Wednesday.

“It will then look at ways of getting the best out the government set up.”

The Sagana retreat comes four days after a cabinet meeting at State House, which assessed the status of Jubilee flagship projects whose implementation the government wants to use as its re-election campaign tool.

Since his election, President Kenyatta has held two retreats — the first in March 2014 at Mt Kenya Safari Club and the second at the Great Rift Valley Lodge in Naivasha in April 2016 to review his three years in power.

AUSTERITY MEASURES

At the Mt Kenya Safari Club, the cabinet agreed on austerity measures, which included the President, his deputy, cabinet and principal secretaries and other top government officials taking pay cuts.

There are doubts if the salary reduction was ever implemented.

The Naivasha retreat, however, was heavy on the agenda of implementing key government projects with infrastructure, energy and agriculture identified as the “top-selling areas” for the administration.

The standard gauge railway, provision of tablets to Standard One pupils and road construction are some of the projects undertaken by the government.
The Naivasha retreat came after President Kenyatta handed the man he poached in 2015 from Safaricom Ltd — Nzioka Waita to head the Presidential Delivery Unit more powers to push through Jubilee’s pillar projects.

At the time of elevating Mr Waita to deputy Chief of Staff, State House Spokesperson Manoah Esipisu said: “In this role, Mr Nzioka Waita shall deputise the Chief of Staff and Head of the Public Service Joseph Kinyua in discharging his mandate.”

It was understood that as head of PDU, Mr Waita encountered resistance in getting cabinet and principal secretaries to implement cross-cutting projects.

On Wednesday, sources said some CSs and PSs would start arriving at Sagana Lodge on Thursday.