State did well to beat a retreat on laptops

National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich has finally let out the truth about the once-hyped laptop project for primary schools.

The project is not going anywhere and any allocation that had been earmarked for it will have to be reallocated to other pressing needs.

As published elsewhere in this edition, the government is reorganising its resources and putting the taxpayers’ money where there is value.

Finance and politics never make the best of bed fellows. Provision of laptops to the more than 20,000 primary schools was a central plank in the Jubilee Coalition campaign for the 2013 General Election.

Once in power, the administration started shifting goal posts and the last it said was that the laptops project would be launched in Standard One this year. But the hard reality of finance has come to bear on the government; the project cannot run.

SCUTTLE POLITICAL PROMISE

Emotions will certainly run high with political leaders likely to take on the Treasury CS with venom for appearing to scuttle a political promise, but that would be naïve. The truth must be confronted. This was a romantic idea used to win an election, but it could not stand the reality test. Some facts are worth considering.

One, the economy is struggling under a heavy debt burden. Two, many more impactful, urgent and priority projects are grounded because of lack of resources.

For example, even if the focus was on education, priority would be on infrastructure and learning resources like classrooms, books and teachers rather than laptops. Three, some projects take too long to roll out and tie so much money yet never yield much returns.

Any sound economist knows that limited resources must be used prudently. Let the government prioritise resource allocation rather than push populist stunts that cannot pass muster.