Youths demand answers from Ruto over high unemployment

The Deputy President William Ruto was put to task to explain how the Jubilee Government is handling youth concerns such as high unemployment rates, appointments to public office and education.

Many of the questions asked at the symposium held at the Kenya National Theatre touched on matters affecting the youth.

Mr Ruto took the opportunity to highlight Jubilee development record in the past three years but said the government was keen on creating jobs for young people.

“We are on a deliberate move to ensure that our economy create jobs through for instance the Kenya Industrial Transformation Program. We are also speaking to private companies to offer internships to them,” said DP Ruto.

Nonetheless, some asked the DP why recent appointments to national institutions favoured the “grey haired” and not fresh graduates.

Corruption was also top on the questions list with most of the participants of the symposium arguing that the Jubilee Government was “talking a lot” and “acting less.”

In his defence Mr Ruto said: “We can do as far as the law allows us to. As a government we can facilitate independent institutions to handle people suspected of being corrupt. We admit there is a problem.

“We have reached out to the Chief Justice, the President has met him to discuss corruption matters because we believe all arms of governments are bound to address it.”

The host, Mr Hussein Mohamed from Royal Media Services, said in a rejoinder: “We are not seeing any actions” to which the Deputy President responded: “That is unfair, we have asked six Cabinet Secretaries to step aside, we did not talk, we acted. We have recovered assets, stolen or suspected to have been acquired through public funds.”

EXAM LEAKS

In the same vein, he defended the recent disbandment of the Kenya National Examination Council (Knec) saying the Jubilee administration, unlike past governments, seeks to address the exam cheating menace.

We have been having this problem but this year we demanded a clear explanation from Knec.

We have disbanded the board and we are going to charge any person linked to the leaks, and that is why we are also reviewing the curriculum and the entire exam system.

Mr Ruto also lauded Jubilee’s 70 per cent completion of the standard gauge railway (SGR) that he said will be fully completed on June 2017.

The DP said that even though the SGR project has stretched the country’s resources and was mulled for over 20 years before Jubilee took it up, it will reduce travel time from Mombasa to Nairobi by over 30 per cent. On infrastructure, he further said by 2017, we will have done 5000 new tarmacked roads.

On security, Deputy Ruto said the government is “rethinking our security architecture, to be intelligence-based so as to better deploy resources we have.”

“We have 3,000 new police vehicles. We are increasing air power and enhancing the terms of service of our security forces to see that they have insurance cover. That way we ensure their families will benefit if something happens to them,” he said.

His address comes two days before President Uhuru Kenyatta’s State of the Nation Address.