On Friday, January 6, President William Ruto officially opened a meeting with top government officials at the Mt Kenya Safari Club, Nanyuki.
Ruto, who was addressing top Kenya Kwanza leaders, turned away three Principal Secretaries who had checked in late.
The tough-talking President made clear his intentions to wipe out laxity in his government – warning that he expected a departure from the previous government’s style of ruling.
In his keynote address to Cabinet Secretaries and Principals Secretaries, the president reportedly urged his Cabinet to ensure prudence in using public resources.
To minimize spending, President Ruto reportedly reprimanded CSs who had tagged along their drivers and personal assistants to the meeting and ordered them to pay for their expenses.
“Why do you have to be accompanied by your PAs and other staff in this meeting?” the president said as quoted by the Standard.
The President said the main agenda of the four-day retreat is to consolidate the government’s plan for the turnaround of the economy with a focus on agriculture, value addition, and manufacturing.
“It must be clear that the whole of government approach will be bottom-up. We have agreed all our interventions must be from the bottom-up,” he said.
He said the Kenya kwanza government will digitize all government services in the next six months.
This, the president said was aimed at broadening the tax base and at the same time ensuring any loopholes that come with collections of the taxes are sealed.
“There will be nothing like waiting to file our returns at the end of the month. We will be paying taxes as we spend our money or go about our business,” he said adding that everybody will be paying taxes starting with him as president.
