President Kenyatta has a strong case to make to Kenyans on why he deserves a second term to finish the on-going projects and launch new ones. [Photo/The Independent] [endif]One of the key areas that Kenyans will thoroughly study when making a decision on whether to give President Uhuru Kenyatta a second term in August is if he has kept the promises he made to the country in 2013. Here is a look at the promises he made to Kenyans before the last general election and what he has done about them — 4 years later.Free primary healthcare for expectant mothers. Today, the number of expectant mothers delivering in hospitals has more than doubled — to 1.2 million by the end of 2016.
Improve access to affordable healthcare. Number of Kenyans with access to outpatient medical care through NHIF has risen from 3.8 million (2013) to 5.8 million in 2017.
Job creation. The economy has created 2.3 million jobs in 4 years.
Bring service delivery closer to every Kenyan. Service delivery has now been transformed by 45 Huduma centres in 41 counties, providing 66 different government services to over 40,000 Kenyans every day.
Digital transformation. E-Citizen platform has greatly helped in services like passport applications, visa applications, driving license renewals, vehicle registration, business registration, company searches and more than 190 other public services.
Set up strong foundation for economic prosperity. This has been achieved through transformation to support manufacturing and infrastructure. Decent jobs have been created out of it.
Accelerate path to industrialisation; the need to improve infrastructure and increase access to electricity Because of substantial changes the Uhuru administration has made in business policy, Kenya has been ranked as the 3rd
Steady GPD growth. The Kenyan economy has expanded at a strong average of 5.9% since 2013. Meanwhile, the global average has been 3%.
Improved tax collections. Increased from Sh847 billion to Sh1.2 trillion by end of 2016, making Kenya rely less on foreign borrowing to balance the budget.
War against corruption. Kenya now has 90 special prosecutors for economic crimes and the Judiciary has created a special Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Division of the High Court.
Build a new railway from Mombasa to Malaba through Kisumu. First phase — Mombasa to Nairobi — will be completed by June this year.
Pursue and freeze assets of corruption and economic crimes. We now have institutions that deal with that, such as the Asset Recovery Agency and the Financial Reporting Centre. Sh3 billion has been recovered since.
Push ratio of police officers from below one officer to 800 citizens. As per today, there is 1 officer to 380 citizens, which is better than the UN prescribed ratio of 1 officer for every 450 citizens
Connect electricity to all public primary schools by 2017. Today, 14,045 schools, representing over 98% of all public primary schools, are now connected to the national grid.
Provide access to electricity for 70% of all households by end of 2017. 3.7 million new homes now have electricity. That’s more than double the number of homes connected since independence.
Making Kenya a top destination. World’s most powerful leaders have come to visit, and as a result Kenya has signed beneficial economic deals and this has been a boost in tourism. The visits of the leaders of the US, China, Israel, Vatican (The Pope) are but a few.
Improve road networks. 1,950km of new roads have now been completed by the Jubilee administration, and another 7,000km are under different phases of construction.
Connect every county to Fiber Optic technology to ease access to information. Today, every county headquarters is connected to fibre and 50% of all sub-county headquarters are also connected.
Social protection to vulnerable members of the society. Today, under ‘Inua Jamii' safety net programme, 720,000 elderly people, up from 220,000 in 2013, have benefited. The budget for this initiative has been increased by 600%, to Sh18 billion.
National Youth Service (NYS) transformation. The NYS transformation has changed lives in Kibera and many other parts of the country, by creating jobs for the youth and keeping the environment clean.
Help the youth access funds to start businesses. Since 2013, a million tough Kenyans have had access to more than Sh11 billion.
Upgrade public hospital facilities. By 2013, only four referral hospitals had such equipment. Today, 92 hospitals across the counties have now been equipped with modern diagnostic machines, reducing the journeys that patients make to hospitals in Nairobi.
From the above, it is clear President Kenyatta has a strong case to make to Kenyans on why he deserves a second term to finish the on-going projects and launch new ones.