The disputed election in Kenya at the end of last year has left the country with two significant unexpected expenses: the cost of catering for refugees who have been ejected from their homes after politically-inspired violence, and the additional cost of paying for a “grand coalition” government in which a large number of members have been awarded cabinet positions (and the extraordinarily high cabinet-level salaries that go with them).
Kenya’s biggest budget expense is on civil servant salaries, accounting for 40% of the government’s expected revenue. In order to meet the cost of resettling internally displaced refugees, it was proposed that a part of civil servants’ salaries should be deducted. However, the Daily Nation reports that proposal unsurprisingly met with opposition from the civil servants and has now been abandoned.
A teachers’ union official has suggested that politicians, rather than teachers, should be required to meet the costs, because they actively contributed to the chaos: “Teachers are poorly paid and struggle to make ends meet. The violence was incited by politicians and they should be made to give donations. If they could afford Sh1 million ($17,000) per plate during campaigns, why not now?”