President William Ruto has started appointing the ministers he dropped to create the so-called broad-based government that roped in opposition politicians.
Dr Ruto has picked Eliud Owalo, the former ICT and Creative Economy Cabinet Secretary (CS) as the deputy chief of staff, performance and delivery management, a role that puts him in charge of monitoring the performance of ministries, departments and agencies.
According to a release from Felix Koskei, the chief of staff and head of public service, “the ministerial appointment will, among other roles, be responsible for effective and efficient implementation, monitoring and evaluation of priority projects and initiatives of the 5th administration in line with the BETA (Bottom Up Transformation Agenda) Plan”.
Apart from the political undertones in the appointment, performance and delivery management suits Mr Owalo well since that is his forte, a professional background that has seen him work for political heavyweights including Raila Odinga, Musalia Mudavadi and now Dr Ruto coming up with strategies aimed at winning the presidential election.
It remains to be seen whether Mr Owalo will deliver in his new ‘delivery’ managment docket of monitoring how some of his former ministerial colleagues run their offices in serving voters, especially the rank and file that Kenya Kwanza– the ruling coalition– promised milk and honey in the bottom-up transformation.
Among the constituencies that have been at the bottom since time aeons are the youth who have recently engaged the government in running battles, saying Ruto should resign. Indeed, it was in the aftermath of the so-called Gen-Z demonstrations in about 70 percent of the 47 counties that the recent Cabinet reshuffle was crafted.
In the reshuffle about 10 Cabinet Secretaries (CSs), among them Owalo and Moses Kuria, lost their lucrative jobs, less than two years into the new government.
In the new high-profile appointments, Mr Kuria, the former Public Service CS, has been named an adviser in the President’s Council of Economic Advisors that economist David Ndii heads.
Before he was dropped from the Cabinet, Mr Kuria held two dockets, starting with Industry, Trade and Investment before he was moved to Public Service.
President Ruto has also appointed Dennis Itumbi to head the creative economy and special projects desk in the Executive Office of the President. The appointment, said Mr Koskei, will go into fostering the government’s “zeal of innovation and growth” of the new sector.
Since the era of Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s fourth President with whom Dr Ruto worked as deputy President, there have been deliberate attempts to graft the creatives sector to create jobs for the youth whose unemployment is a thorn in the flesh of various administrations.
editor@aplain.co.ke
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