Traders and residents in Kisumu have asked the government not to raise taxes as one of the options to pay teachers the Sh17 billion as per the court ruling.
Treasury PS Kamau Thugge told the Parliamentary Finance Committee that hiking taxes of an already over burdened citizenry is an option the government was looking at to comply with the court order.
Thugge said there are only three options on the table to raise funds for the teachers who were awarded a 50-60 per cent pay rise by the labour court in June and upheld by the Supreme Court on Monday.
The three options according to the PS are raising taxes, borrowing or coming up with a supplementary budget which he said will affect development expenditure.
His remarks have not gone down well with the public with most of them saying the government should not consider the tax option.
Businessman Jacob Onyango told the Star on Wednesday that life would be tough in case the raising of tax option is adopted and it’s the common man who will suffer most.
His counterpart Elizabeth Atieno however said if the government made a deal with teachers they could have honoured it because the situation could have not reached this level.
Atieno questioned why the government would now please the teachers at the expense of other citizens.
“The government has failed and should consider other alternative ways of raising the money but not increasing the taxes,” she said.