Treasury cuts funding to Kibaki office and cuts staff

By BRIAN NGUGI
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Summary

• The Treasury is set to cut funding for the late President Mwai Kibaki’s office, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of shillings in pension benefits offered to the former head of state.
• Mr. Kibaki received an annual pension of 34.2 million shillings or 2.85 shillings monthly, which is equivalent to the salary and benefits of top executives of state-owned companies.
• His office cost taxpayers 98.6 million shillings in the year ended June and the Treasury allocated 101.1 million shillings for the financial year beginning July 1.

The Treasury is set to cut funding for the late President Mwai Kibaki’s office, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of shillings in pension benefits offered to the former head of state.

Mr. Kibaki, who died on April 22 at age 90, had received pension benefits, including a fleet of luxury cars, a fully furnished office and around 40 workers, since his departure in 2013.

Now the Treasury says the office will cease to exist and some of the workers will be declared redundant, with those on secondment being reabsorbed into departments and other agencies.

Mr. Kibaki received an annual pension of 34.2 million shillings or 2.85 million shillings per month, which is equivalent to the salary and benefits of top executives of state-owned companies.

His office cost taxpayers 98.6 million shillings in the year ended June and the Treasury allocated 101.1 million shillings for the financial year beginning July 1.

“The law requires that payment related to Kibaki’s retirement benefits be withdrawn in the event of his death and we expect the office to be liquidated within the next three months,” said a Treasury source, who spoke expressed on condition of anonymity.

The withdrawal will be similar to what happened to President Daniel arap Moi’s office when he died on February 4.

Running the offices of Mr Moi and Mr Kibaki cost taxpayers 243 million shillings in the year to June 2020, with compensation for their staff, excluding those seconded by the government , taking 126 million shillings.

Seconded government assistants, including press officers and security guards, are paid by the line ministry.

In Mr. Kibaki’s office, Ngari Gituku, a longtime civil servant, served as the late president’s private secretary.

Other aides such as Stanley Murage, who served as a policy and program advisor, will leave the office as the office is liquidated. Mr. Murage was Mr. Kibaki’s only formal political adviser during his tenure as head of state.

The withdrawal of funding for the two offices means that Kenya, for the first time since 2002, will not have a budget to fill the post of retired presidents.

The Treasury omitted allowances for President Uhuru Kenyatta’s pension office and staff from the budget for the year starting in July, another indicator of the head of state’s quest to remain active in party politics.

The estimated 100 million shillings allowance would have covered a fully furnished office for the retired president, assistants, limousines and other benefits such as housing, fuel and entertainment allowances.

It is understood that the Treasury is avoiding breaching sections of the law which prohibits a retired president from holding office in a political party six months after retirement.

Voters are due to go to the polls on August 9, but Mr Kenyatta will not be on the ballot due to a constitutional limit of two five-year terms.

Mr Kenyatta was offered a five-year term as head of the Jubilee Party in February and is on the list of chairmen of the board of Azimio the Umoja One Kenya Coalition, the veteran opposition vehicle Raila Odinga used to launch his fifth candidacy for the presidency of Kenya.

The law, however, allows the Treasury to provide a retired president with a monthly pension of 691,200 shillings, regardless of political affiliation.

Mr. Kibaki’s election in 2002 ended 40 years of one-party rule since independence when Mr. Moi retired and served two terms until 2013.

He is credited with reviving Kenya’s then-battling economy, but his tenure was marred by deadly violence that killed more than 1,200 Kenyans following his disputed re-election in December 2007.

He also struggled to fight widespread corruption as Kenya’s third president.

Pension benefits for former presidents have come under particular scrutiny, particularly in the past two years when allowances were increased significantly, even as the government insisted it had put put in place austerity measures to deal with an increase in recurrent expenditure, including the wage bill.

In 2015, a High Court judge stopped the government from paying allowances worth millions of shillings to Mr Kibaki and Mr Moi after finding it was an unnecessary expense.

The Attorney General appealed the decision, allowing the two to continue to receive their retirement emoluments.

The sections of the law that the court struck down gave Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Moi a monthly housing allowance of Sh300,000, fuel (Sh200,000), entertainment (Sh200,000) and utilities ( Sh300,000).

The law also entitled them to two personal assistants, four secretaries, four messengers, four drivers and bodyguards, bringing office and home workers to 34 under the publicly funded scheme. They were also entitled to four cars which had to be replaced every four years.

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