It is baffling sometimes to imagine of the seriousness of the Government of Kenya as a genuine enterprise keen on executing its mandate as a regime. It churns out crisp and well-meaning blueprints one after the other but nothing much to show for it. If the plans were implemented to the later, Kenya would make milestones.
Think of the latest of them all, Agenda Four and its four pillars of expansion of the manufacturing sector; affordable housing; affordable healthcare and food security – all key sectors of an economy that if they were properly addressed would ensure prosperity for this nation.
For Agenda Four to be achieved, however, issues of budget should be firstly dealt with in an unassuming manner. Importantly, Agenda Four financing needs to be largely internally generated. If its finances were to be sourced, as much of this government’s resources are, through commercial loans at market rates, then little, if anything, would be achieved with the blueprint. It would amount to digging a hole to fill another, which would only ensure a vicious cycle.
This brings to mind Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), the government agency mandated with collection of the national taxes and implementation of the same in Kenya. The success of the President’s pet project (Agenda Four), which is his only assuring avenue on securing a legacy after his imminent retirement, depends largely on the extent to which KRA can execute its mandate.
One would therefore imagine that it is all serious business at KRA. That, however, is not the case. Questionable integrity issues have never ceased to emerge at the agency. The more you think that the current one would be last, the more another scandal of impropriety dogging the agency’s employees crops up.
The latest one, of January, like all of them before it, is about the agency’s staff involvement in tax evasion schemes. KRA, according to local dailies has since fired five of its officers working under the Regional Electronic Cargo Tracking System for involvement in tax evasion, contravening the very mandate for which they exist. Since the reaction is from within the agency, what we have seen is definitely scratching of the surface.
So early in the year; by December many other scandals will have emerged at the agency and dealt with in the same cosmetic fashion. Pay tax to be self-reliant is KRA’s rallying call to mwananchi. Where on earth do they even summon the moral authority to shout that to us?
