Following recent comments on this blog about skewed national resource allocation and suggestions to bloggers to send-in proposals to
Treasury which they feel might be included into the forthcoming government financial year budget, the following is reposted here at Kumekucha for the benefit of the many Kenyan citizens and tax payers who visit this blog. This is an opportunity for patriotic citizens to show that they can also, in their own small way, play a constitutionally given role in shaping the destiny of this country.
NOTICE ON PROPOSALS FOR THE BUDGET FOR F/Y 2008/2009This article was first published at Bungle La Mwananchi.
Mwananchi 2008/9 Budget-Put your Thumprint!Bunge La Mwananchi proposes that the Government's budget should be balanced at 60:40 where 60% is development and 40% recurrent expenditures.
Kenya's 2008/9 budget year (commencing 15th June, 2008) is almost here!
Bunge La Mwananchi (Kenya People's Parliament ) is working on delivering a MWANANCHI BUDGET before Hon. Amos Kimunya gives us the GRAND POLITICAL BUDGET.
In this regard, we are currently studying previous years' budgets to identify trends and priorities in Government expenditures so as to bring those areas into sharp focus. Bunge La Mwananchi proposes that the Government's budget should be balanced at 60:40 where 60% is development and 40% recurrent expenditures.
Let me give you a sneak preview of some of the things we are discovering:
For the last 5 years, the State House budget allocation for transport has been as follows:
Firstly, State House is said to have 149 official cars. This is not easy to establish, but for argument's sake we will work with the figure of 149 cars. Further, each car is budgeted to consume 114 litres of fuel per day. Surely, besides maybe the President's Limousine, there is no car in Kenya that has the tank capacity of over 100 litres of fuel. Even further investigation reveals that all that is required to account for the 114 litres of fuel used per day, is for one to produce a receipt for that amount of litres from any petrol station. A rather dubious accounting mechanism that raises alot of questions in any self respecting audit. To qualify that, the account's receipt doesnot show the automated fuel pump's reading.
Taking it further, we will recall that in the last 5 years, save for the Referendum and the General Election which were ostensibly not Government affairs but political parties affairs, President Kibaki did not travel from State House much. If you do some quick math of amount of fuel allocated over that period of time (149 cars X 114 litres of fuel per car per day X 365 days X 5 years) you will arrive at a whooping 30,999,450 litres of fuel. Take it a step further and translate that into shillings at an average of 65/= per litre... K.Shs. 2,014,964,250. Yes, it is over K.Shs. 2 billion...
And that is only one area of one government department's expenditure. A literal tip of the iceberg. You would be shocked if you dug deeper into other departments and contextualized the findings!
The billion shilling question is, where did all this fuel really go? Who might have spent the EXTRA money and on what?
Fellow Kenyans and friends of Kenya, we must not allow this kind of loop holes in the management of our taxes and resources to go on unchallenged. General save face statements from the Finance Minister in assessing past financial years must no longer be accepted unaudited. Bunge La Mwananchi urges you to consider looking at our previous budgets, especially the last 5 years and find out areas where we should expose the Government's fraudulent expenditures so that we can identify mis-allocated resources and earmark priority areas in which to put to use the "recovered" money in developing Kenya.
Bunge La Mwananchi envisages an adjusted and practical budget that results in the national Constituency Development Fund (CDF) receiving a boost of as much K.Shs. 200 billion for the 2008/9 financial year and thereby allow each constituency to receive at least KSh. 1 billion for constituency
We urge you to study the previous budgets, make your proposals and leave your thumbprint on the 2008/9 budget. Let us also utilize Bunge La Mwananchi website www.bulamwa.co.ke discussion forums to further deliberations.
In the setting the agenda for our leaders,
George Nyongesa
Bunge La Mwananchi
+254 720 451 235
www.bulamwa.co.ke
I’m finally back after a 6 month hiatus from blogging and I want to start by addressing a very nagging question but I’ll get to that in just a moment. No doubt you’ve experienced social networking in one form or another (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, Twitter etc etc), and if you haven’t you’d better quit living in the 90’s. It’s all about creating and sharing information with friends, colleagues and basically everyone. The last 3 years especially have been witness to an explosive growth in the size and influence of these social networks. “Individuals finally have the power” - wow! (btw, that wow is supposed to be sarcastic).
12:04
)
