Dear President Uhuru Kenyatta,
This letter is an attempt to get the voice of Kenyans to you as you ready for your swearing in.
How can Kenyans be heard by you?
We all want Desperately to be heard and yet nobody is listening. There is anger and frustration and it’s growing. People don’t have a voice in deciding anything that concerns them politically or economically.
We Kenyans have severe doubts about the system. It is rigged and we know it.
We are worried about jobs and bills and food. The system is not working for most people but for fewer and fewer Kenyans despite all the education and hard work.
How is the System rigged?
1. The economy was not designed to include everyone fairly especially in way of access. It was designed to benefit the government and the people in it. It is an immoral economy that does not need reform but a total overhaul and Re engineering to work from ground up. Kenya economy has to be organized for People not for Projects, with the Understanding that every player is not a beneficiary but a part of growing it. This re design will also affect our culture. We will not look to governance structures as places of taking and grabbing but places of contributing and growing as we make room for many more downwards and upwards. We will not have a challenge seeing the place and contribution of women in it and we will not have politicians and public servants shamelessly robbing Kenyans through the government system.
2. It seems like Ronald Reagan said “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is our problem”. Where is our wealth going? To the top? The middle or the bottom? The debt we are consuming who are the beneficiaries for the three groups ? We need to change something. Are farmers producing and making money? Kenya’s agriculture sector employs more than 75 percent of the workforce and accounts both directly and indirectly for approximately 51 percent of Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP). Yet Half of our population is undernourished, can’t eat enough food as recommended by World Health, in quantity not even quality. 1 out of every 5 families are critically food poor, even if they used all their income on food they still would be underfed. And guess what? in this category a majority are our farmers. We don’t have food for two major reasons: Low Production and Unbelievably high Post production losses. Both can be sorted if the system is not rigged.
3. The Economy is growing we hear… but all the money is going to the top and so is the political power. This is a vicious circle. Because now the political power decide the beneficiaries of the economy. Ever heard the phrase “the cartel is fighting back” ? The net effect of all the tops fighting back is to snuff the cash and benefit from the bottom and the middle. It happens through the legislature, through the cabinets, through the public servants and administrators. And the normal citizen is voiceless in those circles. As the Chamber of commerce was instructed many decades ago “Business must learn the lesson … that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination — without embarrassment and without reluctance. “ Who speaks for our benefit?
4. Party labels and tribes aside. Do we Kenyans sincerely believe Politics, Economy and their values are for our benefit? Do the people who operate the government do so at their own profit or that of the citizens? Is the Constitution which is designed to limit the government and its people’s excesses enforced to do so ? Is Power misused that’s why we see overnight millionaires and billionaires in government and among their relatives and cronies ? Most importantly when you read this, do you want to change Things or you want in? How do we make it and be proud of our honest effort ? Are employees, who by the way are just 2.5 Million out of the approximate 13 Million economically engaged Kenyans, fairly compensated for their work? Kenyans are frightened, cornered and insecure. This is dangerous for the government.
5. We, Kenyans, not employed and who can’t make ends meet even on our hardest working days are left picking up the bills for high debt and expenses that benefit the top few either through exorbitant spending or outright Economic banditry and theft. Why this arrogant excessiveness when so many are struggling to eat? Kenyans have Economic Rights as Enshrined in Article 43 of the Constitution which in part states: Every person has the right
(a) to the highest attainable standard of health, which includes the right to health care services
(b) to accessible and adequate housing, and to reasonable standards of sanitation
(c) to be free from hunger, and to have adequate food of acceptable quality;
(d) to clean and safe water in adequate quantities;
What is happening on Public Health and Insurance front? On telecommunications front? On Pharmaceutical and private hospitals front? How do we sweep all these under in the name of Public relations or legal loopholes?
The voices of the Kenyans have disappeared. We have been shoved aside and rendered useless in the bigger political and economic plan and picture. Kenyans don’t think the country is headed in the right direction. As one policy Man once said “We are becoming a two tiered society, composed of a few winners and a larger group of Kenyans left behind. Our anger and disillusionment is now a tool for manipulation.” This anger and rage is what’s destroying our core and bones. Mass resentment is our slow poison that is replacing tolerance with hate.
We invite you Mr President to get down to our level , without vengeance, anger or fatigue and listen to us as Kenyans. What will your legacy really and truly be?
Yours truly
Citizen 22593387
Rita Mayier Njoroge
This is my voice. Add your voice and share.
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