Might there still be a remaining ear that has the ability to hear a cry from an aggrieved Kenyan?
Might there be the remnant of an eye that still has tears left to cry for a bleeding Kenya?
While some may choose to interpret news issues as positive or negative depending on one’s political affiliation, there is a bug that continues to suck the blood from each of us.
There is a demon that has vowed to fleece this nation of all the proceeds of her hardworking citizens.
This is no other than “CORRUPTION.”
It is hypocritical for any thinking brain to point an accusing finger at the other, as the one mandated with fighting corruption. While certainly there are institutions meant to carry out the task and vetted citizens that are gifted with tax-payers money to combat the vice, the back stops with each to ask, what little they may do, to contribute towards fighting the vice! This is the very reason that prompts me to share what I went through in the last two days.
A colleague of mine assisted me to book a smart driving license.
As the need was, he booked that I go to a nearby Huduma Centre whose purpose is to serve the people in the still largest slum in East Africa.
The last few times he had visited the place (last year), their services were admirable. There was an assurance that it would hardly take 30 minutes to get the bio-metrics taken. Setting aside an hour and a half, we drove to the center. I even booked a client to see me on return at the expiry of two hours.
On arrival at the Centre, I was shocked to see a queue that had over fifty persons all interested in getting the NTSA (National Transport and Safety Authority) service. It did not make sense how all these could have been booked online to come at the same time.
On further inquiry, it became evident that booking online was gradually becoming illogical for times given to clients were no more important.
This reminded me of the long queues that we used to have to renew driving licenses, in the regimes of the single party rule, in the 1980s.
After about an hour of patient waiting, I managed to enter an open sitting room, where the faces of frustrated Kenyans met me. One could tell the agony of the long waits that these individuals had been subjected to. True to it, those engaged in ensuring the frustrations, were having moments to reap. If one desired a service, all that was needed was to call upon a staff. With some exchange of between a hundred and a thousand, one would then be served. I looked at the hundreds of people that had to waste hours only to receive a service that could otherwise be done in minutes.
I felt sad that a country whose debt burden is in trillions heading to tens of such would be on the forefront yet again wasting her human resource.
I, however, could not frustrate my client, so I left, unattended, and went back to see her. The following morning again I decided to go there early, to see if I could get help. Arrival was at eight in the morning. By nine, no one had been attended by the very busy Huduma Centre staff. Again the queue was growing and growing. By the time the first bunch of frustrated Kenyans was called in at a few minutes past nine a large chunk was ready to part with a few shillings to get this done once and for all.
What a shrewd way of ensuring that people bribe their way to getting a service! In the inside huge room, they still had to again wait for long minutes to get the staff that was enjoying catching up, slowly putting their things in order. Indeed this Huduma Centre has the meaning of the noble Swahili word in its reverse.
What then may have happened to this gem that was started to quicken the services and ease the times wasted by Kenyans searching for government services? What is it that has befallen the online systems whose aim was to ensure corruption is minimized and that services would be rendered to citizens with minimal time wastes?
Evidently, Kenyans mandated with the tasks are not only sleeping on the job but are determined to ensure that citizens suffer and so have no other but to give bribes.
Again this is being found the best way to get hardworking citizens to contribute towards debt reduction; what irony!
After the frustration and realization that even a day would not get my bio-metrics taken at this center, I decided to inquire from a friend if I could get the very same services at NTSA headquarters.
Soon, I was informed that it was possible. I arrived at the offices shortly after.
I found longer queues than I had witnessed at the slum Huduma Centre.
Surprisingly though, was the speed at which the staff was working, and the clarity with which services were being administered. In thirty minutes, the queue that I was in, which had had 20 people ahead, had melted away and I was having my bio-metrics taken.
I left satisfactorily after having spent only forty minutes.
Indeed there must be an ear and an eye whose task is to watch the Huduma centers. If they have ceased to give the services for which they were founded, something needs to be done.
If the personnel in these centers have been converted to bribe takers and frustrators of service seekers, something again needs to be done.
It pains that we can fight to spiral back to the days when visiting a government office was so frustrating that one had to think thrice before departure.
