where is my water, dude?

My, oh my…so I opened the website of The Standard, and came across this animated gif, which leads us to the Website of the “Office of Public Communications“.

Oh? A photo gallery? Lemme see….*click*…. :

majijimmy

“President Kibaki launching a completed water project.”

Please: with cheap questions such as “What has Kibaki done with your money?” (as shown on that animated gif!), I’d at least also expect the same sort of populism on the sample images as shown on the public communications website. You are talking about water? Then show us the water. Simpoool…

I don’t know who’s responsible for this publicity, but when it comes to politics, my own experience is that Kenyans aren’t that dumb to see WHAT Kibaki, as a person, and the NARC government has brought upon Kenyans in the past.

And I think by now everyone interested has understood so far that the “Baba Moi” era is over, and that change doesn’t entirely depend on a single person in power. So how come they are refocusing it back on a single person? Because of Raila? LOL..

Author: jke

Hi, I am an engineer who freelances in water & sanitation-related IT projects at Saniblog.org. You'll also find me on Twitter @jke and Instagram.

9 thoughts on “where is my water, dude?”

  1. Dude,

    I saw this post and I had to rant.

    Have you seen this propaganda document produced by that same department that gave us those photos of the opening of water projects without water?

    It basically claims that any development in Kenya is because of Kibaki (by attributing all Kenyan government achievements to KIbaki).

    This includes many private sector initiatives. It will give me a headache to document all the fallacies but lets start on page 7 which is the 1st page of real content and deal with just the issue of rural electrification.

    Over 160 rural electrification projects in 58 districts completed
    • All schools, colleges, village polytechnics, community health centres, markets, and
    administrative centres to be supplied with electricity
    • 1208 projects in 191 constituencies, 418 trading centres, 288 secondary schools,
    107 health centres,43 water projects,39 coffee factories,13 tea buying centre and 13
    police stations will be completed by June 30th ,2007 at a cost of over Ksh.7 billion.

    point 1: Over 160 rural electrification projects in 58 districts completed

    most of that work has been funded by JICA and the EU. The documentation to show this can be found here and here

    point 2: All schools, colleges, village polytechnics, community health centres, markets, and administrative centres to be supplied with electricity

    WTF????? (WTF, of course, means worse than failure in this setting)

    Of course you want to supply electricity to them. We also want electricity in the middle of the desert in NE province for everyone there. The question is have you done it yet? If not, don’t call it an achievement.

    point 3: 1208 projects in 191 constituencies, 418 trading centres, 288 secondary schools, 107 health centres,43 water projects,39 coffee factories,13 tea buying centre and 13 police stations will be completed by June 30th ,2007 at a cost of over Ksh.7 billion.

    WTF????? KPLC, which is doing all this work, is a semi-privately held company so the Government is essentially claiming private sector work as an achievement.

    Even worse is the fact that design and construction work for projects not funded by Rural Electrification (ESRP which is described in the documents linked to above) is FULLY paid for by the party that wants the electricital supply. Meaning that all these projects are being paid fully by customers!!!

    I laughed when I got to page 10: it says

    Media freedom ensured. Fm radio stations now talk openly

    WTF??? Whats this?? Or this? Do you think that the people reading this doc are morons?

    Maybe there was a security issue that made it imperative that the government raid these institutions. Who knows. Kenyans need security so, if there was indeed a security issue that made it necessary for the government to go in, then its great that we took care of business and kept Kenyans safe – I think that we all agree that that is important. Implementation of security is a different debate that I will not try to cover here since I do not have the expertise to deal with it. State security is not a matter to be taken lightly and the Government must do what it must to make sure that media is not abused as a medium of disseminating divisive messages as was the case in Rwanda and in the Balkans.

    My point is just don’t write documents claiming that the government takes care of press freedom when the evidence says otherwise.

    I think that the sad thing about this is that the Kibaki government has done a lot and I mean, a lot of good work for Kenyans.

    They have put in place lots of policy related stuff to revive a lot of dead projects and sectors – tourism is up, agriculture is coming back, kids are in school, jobs are beginning to become available and yes indeed, Kenya Cooperative Creameries (KCC), Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) and Mumias Sugar Company are on the way back to becoming viable commercial operations. All of these results are a function of good governance which the government is beginning to provide but it is not a direct result. This doc is just like the Aringo poem when he called used the phrase “Prince of Peace” to describe another leader.

    I am just saddened by the fact that this guy prepared this doc to sign Kibaki’s praises at whatever expense damning facts along the way. Stop the overkill rhetoric, we can see Kibaki’s government is doing a good job without the “spokeman” having to write all this rubbish!

  2. It is so sad when some Kenyans expect a government to perform miracles and create change in a span of 5 years with a plethora of full employment, all tarmacked roads in all pocket of Republic of Kenya, irrigation schemes and ranches in N.E Kenya, crime free Nairobi, non existence of Kibera and Mathare slums, well how about free education and well paid teachers and police while it is at it.

    I feel sad for those who do not understand the various facets of economic development and process of change because only those who do not understand are the first to undervalue the little baby steps that has been undertaken by the government.

    The government is not perfect and it cannot do everything and please everyone while doing it.All of us want to see changes in different areas we care about. For some is water, others electricity,others vibrant NSE etc. At least from what I see and hear the current government is somehow trying to lay a foundation for take off for all those areas

    If one is to criticize the government for what they have or have not done, I challenge them to counter attack that with their own well executed plan rather than hollering with nothing to show for it (read Raila)

    For me I do not care whether Mr. Mutua or watchama call him? -the government spokeman’s want to put up a webpage or my space :-) in praise of the government, at least he is Loyal to his Boss (LOL) but perhaps instead of blogging about this or discusing this in the various Kenyan forums, us as Wananchi when we see discrepancies we should air that to the people responsible for put forth that information. If we truly care about our country, then we need to let that ministry know, we need to point those overstated facts to them, complaining as they say in USA “ain’t doing shit” to rectify the problem.

    Why not create a dummy website and show the ministry how it is done or rather make a presentation to them and if they do not like what they see, perhaps we can say we tried. This culture of sitting and pointing fingers while doing nothing is what makes me go crazy. What are afraid of if we take the initiative? ( Nyayo house basement is no longer in existence at least we gotta give it to Kibaki govt for that!

    I believe most of us Kenyans and of course spearheaded by some of our leaders we thrive in an environment of pointing mistakes and doing nothing to rectify the mistakes hence the repeated voting behaviour (vote in those you criticize in the hopes they will all of a sudden become saints).

    What I think Iwas trying to point across,us Kenyans we need to also take initiative, we need to also do our part and stop whining about how the govt is not doing this. We need to stop taking the meaning “Serikali ni baba na mama” literally.

  3. REG: …And what have they ever given us in return?!
    XERXES: The aqueduct?
    REG: What?
    XERXES: The aqueduct.
    REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that’s true. Yeah.
    COMMANDO #3: And the sanitation.
    LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?
    REG: Yeah. All right. I’ll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
    MATTHIAS: And the roads.
    REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don’t they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads–
    COMMANDO: Irrigation.
    XERXES: Medicine. Huh? Heh? Huh…
    COMMANDO #2: Education.
    COMMANDOS: Ohh…
    REG: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
    COMMANDO #1: And the wine.
    COMMANDOS: Oh, yes. Yeah…
    FRANCIS: Yeah. Yeah, that’s something we’d really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.
    COMMANDO: Public baths. And it’s safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.
    FRANCIS: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let’s face it. They’re the only ones who could in a place like this.
    COMMANDOS: Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
    REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
    XERXES: Brought peace.
    REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!

  4. I think that you may have missed the point Irena

    No one is saying that the government is a bad job, in fact, we are saying that they are doing a GREAT job.

    The point is that the days of personality cults are gone yet we have this office still trying to run a small “Baks” cult.

  5. @Steve I know what you wrote and I was not responding to what you have written or JKE for that matter. I was putting points across of “pointing finger” syndrome that we as Kenyans seem to have

  6. P/S It is perhaps because of “Kibaki” that the mechanism of all those private sectors are working in a conducive environment even if they are private sector just like perhaps small business are now able to get micro loans from banks because of kibaki’s govt intervention etc…….

  7. Personally, I think if you’re going to go around blaming Kibaki directly for all that has gone wrong, then you credit him directly for what has gone right. Including private sector initiatives that have materialized. Because these initiatives always existed but many used to turn into white elephants. People have to be empowered to produce results…

    Otherwise you turn communal on both the blame and the credit. For all things gone right, give communal pats on the backs and all things gone wrong, communal and even distribution of blame. And yes, those FM radio stations including Standard papers and stations jabber a lot more than they did in the yayo era. A lot of things they say, had they said about the previous regime, they’d know what the inside of the detention centers look like.

    I think that website is accurate. And we need a log of what’s being done in kenya and it’s a good start.

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