The Kenyan economy is currently on its knees. Many people are unable to meet the cost of daily life. This is influenced by the skyrocketing prices of basic and most consumed commodities.
It’s paradoxical that those people who are employed by the government are the ones more pinched by this huge prices and life expectancy.
Initially, it was assumed that when you work hard in class and acquire good grades, life is likely to change from bad to average and later better whenever you get white collar jobs.
Today, those people living averagely well are either in private entities or are running their own businesses. Actually, people are now running from government jobs and trying to establish their own private sectors.
For the employees, analysis shows that those who are self employed earn better than their salaried counterparts.
Due to such statistics among other data from various experts, the president today decided to “force” a smile into the faces of many small earners in Kenya.
Uhuru declared a wage increment of 12% on the current value. This is a slight improvement from the previous ksh.17, 240 to Ksh. 20, 680. This is courtesy of the labour day, effective May 1st.
Previously, the Central organization for trade union (COTU) Secretary general Francis Atwoli had lobbied for a forty percent increment.After a negotiation with the federation of Kenyan employees (FKE), they decided to settle on a relatively lower percentage of 23 percent.
This means that whatever the head of state met is half way of that agreement.
Several people have come out to critic the increment terming it so meagre. The argument given is that the increment on the wage signed by head of state is not commensurate to the increment experienced in price of commodities.
Precisely, what this means is that the government is yet to settle on a better figure for it’s workers. More people are likely to quit government offices in future and engage in other life compensating activities.
Even so, the challenge is that those sectors that were seen to support the common mwananchi like agriculture are also crippling down day after the other. The prices of fertilizers and other input items is too high for the common mwananchi to afford.
The government strategists needs to do something to avoid the state getting out of hand.
