President William Ruto may have just added fuel to the fire.
This is after he cut the budgets of 8 critical sectors in retaliation after Kenyans, especially Gen Zs, rejected his punitive Finance Bill 2024.
Ruto’s government was forced to drop some taxes in the Finance Bill after public pressure and now there is a big hole in the budget.
National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung’u, wrote to the National Assembly indicating that proposed amendments to the Finance Bill would lead to a revenue shortfall of Ksh200 billion.
As such the Treasury has warned that it will cut funding to critical sectors including education and internships should the amended Finance Bill be passed by Parliament.
To cover the deficit, some areas that will be affected include vocational training centres, university funding, cash transfers for senior citizens as well as confirmation of medical and Junior Secondary School interns.
Other critical sectors to be affected include the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), the school feeding program, and funding of sports academies.
Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and Technical Training Institutions will see a slash of Ksh800 million which was to fund ongoing projects.
In the State Department for Higher Education and Research, a Ksh3.2 billion has been slashed from the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB).
Education will be most affected by the budget cuts as another Ksh3.4 billion has been slashed from the State Department for Basic Education which was supposed to facilitate school feeding programmes and infrastructure for academic institutions.
Cash transfers for senior citizens have been slashed by Ksh5.5 billion which will affect over 800,000 Kenyans.
Treasury has proposed slashing Ksh3.7 billion from confirmation of medical interns and a further Ksh18.9 billion meant for confirmation of JSS interns.
With the Ksh18.9 slash meant for the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), the confirmation of interns to permanent and pensionable terms as well as the hiring of new JSS interns will be postponed indefinitely.
Notably, the Treasury will further withdraw Ksh1 billion that was meant for the Public Service Internship program.
On the National Government CDF, the Treasury has proposed a slash of Ksh15 billion.
