Stars’ Sh20m question
What you need to know:
- What now bothers us is how we will know in future when the DP talks in his personal or official capacity.
- All we know is that damage has been done and the politicians should leave the team alone in future. They should go away all of them … even to another planet except near our national team.
On June 5 last year, Kesses MP Swarup Mishra said that Sh20 million had been set aside to construct a sanitary pads factory that would manufacture the product at affordable price to school going children.
He noted that it was sad that girls still dropped out of school because of the lack of the pads but he believed that with this factory, “this will be able to reduce the girls who drop out of schools”.
It is always 20 million shillings and above for our politicians. They promise it with hot breath and pause to wait for some pre-set applause from the gullible that are daft enough to listen to them.
Indeed one doesn’t know whether to blame them or to just take their “set aside” monies with a pinch of salt.
One may wonder why we single out the example of the sanitary pads factory in our sports pages but we use it just to show how far they can go to make their mouths run amok.
Last year, none other than the deputy president of Kenya, personally while seeking for popularity for posterity, transported himself to the Harambee stars camp. The Stars were training for their crucial tie against Ethiopia.
A win in this match would secure Kenya’s qualification to the Africa Cup of nations to be held mid this year in Egypt.
All Kenyans were tense with expectation and the DP knowing full well that all eyes were on the Stars saw fit to rush there and rub off some limelight from it.
Reaching there, he got the pitch to make lofty promises to the boys and he did it with the smoothest of tongues and great talent.
Promised
He promised the boys that the team will get Sh50 million in cash if they qualify for the coveted championship.
This verbal gesture filled other eclectic politicians with envy and several of them also promised modest sums to the team which they were going to pay from their pockets. Well, all water is under the bridge now. The boys qualified for the Afcon.
The other politicians did foot their bills to the team except the Sh50 million that the DP was going to procure from the government. It has not been paid and last week it was now made official: that the promise was just that; a promise.
Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Sports Kirimi Kaberia, while appearing before the Parliamentary Committee on Sports, Culture and Tourism on Tuesday, distanced himself from the pledge saying the pronouncement was made in his absence.
Kaberia appeared before the committee chaired by the Machakos Town MP Victor Munyaka to present the ministry’s budget proposal for the 2019-20 financial year.
Munyaka expressed concern that the money is yet to be paid and could lead to low morale in the camp but made it clear it was not possible to factor it into the budget because the pronouncement by Ruto was not an official government position but a personal pledge.
What now bothers us is how we will know in future when the DP talks in his personal or official capacity.
All we know is that damage has been done and the politicians should leave the team alone in future. They should go away all of them … even to another planet except near our national team.
