KENYA’S DEBT BURDEN
The Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya should come out and assert his authority in terms of offering advice and assuring Kenyans that the recent heavy borrowing by the Treasury is within manageable levels and will not in any way lead to a serious financial crisis as alluded to by our politicians.
Just recently the CBK was contemplating on lending cash to the County Governments, a move that the Central Organization of Trade Unions, COTU (K) vehemently opposed since this will be a simple conduit through which our hawk-eyed politicians will exploit to siphon money out of our County Governments for Political campaigns and CBK’s continued silence on the issue of the debt burden as raised by leaders will cause more anxiety in our financial market hence affect our economy.
Indeed COTU (K) as the rest of Kenyans is shocked with these revelations bearing in mind that it will be the workers to bear the resultant burden through heavy taxation to service our debt burden.
It is simple economics that heavy borrowing by the government enhances the Country’s foreign vulnerability that eventually weakens our foreign exchange rates that eventually scares away Foreign Investors and the big questions is: Where is these monies borrowed being channeled to, since key sectors like Aviation are on the verge of collapse with Kenya Airways now on its knees and requires urgent capitation and Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) employees have worked for years without any salary adjustment; key Ministries like Labour remain underfunded and cannot afford to hire Labour Inspection Officers and worse still our security agencies including police force lack any decent housing to execute their duties.
The Kenyan workers now demand an explanation on this growing government trend on heavy borrowing and wish to be assured if at all the cited projects into which these monies are going into will be able to effectively contribute to the much needed growth required to service the huge loans now hanging over Kenyans including the unborn.
Francis Atwoli, NOM(DZA) EBS, MBS
SECRETARY GENERAL