Gathecha Kamau
Joined: Jun 15, 2002
Posts: 9
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Province/State: Nairobi Area
City: Nairobi
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From Wainaina:GOVERNMENT MUST CHANGE OR PERISH
January 28, 2005 - 07:34 AM
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Is it really ethical for civil servants to work until age of 60, when the Government has frozen new employment? The only `good news' is that the NARC government can claim it "re-created" jobs for some of our parents and other members of society who are advanced in age.
However, by freezing new employment and retaining experienced (mostly in how not to get work done) staff, the government has effectively denied youth a place in nation building and refused to play their role as a force for effective transition. We have been training a new batch of administrators and other professionals every year for the
last sixty years. Is it that we did not train the young well enough to take over?
Sixty years ago (1945), Kenya was 18years away from becoming an independent state. That is about 30 years before the serious use of computers on earth and 50 years before the Internet became a communication channel in Kenya. In the 21st Century, an age when the postage stamp is fast becoming a historical phenomenon, it is wrong
and unjust to entrust the fulfillment of our aspirations as a nation to the hands of leaders and bureaucrats born 55 years before the launch of the Millennium Development Goals; 47years before Agenda21;58years before the first phase of the World Summit on the Information
Society (WSIS). That is 57 years before the launch of real mobile phone use in Kenya.
The world has changed and we need a government that changes. We must grow and rejuvenate or else we perish. Our systems must change fast enough to keep up with the needs of the post-computing age. We need an economy that creates millions of jobs each year. We need a young, vibrant, ambitious leadership that is in touch with the aspirations
of the computer game generation; yet is sober enough to respect the wisdom of age. In 2005, it is wrong for our civil service to be run by employees conditioned to underdevelopment and inefficient ways of serving Kenyans.
Unfortunately, most of the people in government today spent their teenage and young adulthood years without tap water and electricity. There were no tarmac roads for most of them. That was a time when illiteracy and disease were insurmountable. We appreciate that effort some of them made to free our country from the colonial chains. We however realize that these leaders have already been conditioned to a Kenya characterized by poverty, illiteracy, disease, political and ethnical infighting. Those of us born after independence know that our people in Ukambani, Marakwet and Maralal deserve piped water. We know that it is wrong to have a slum like Kibera or Korogocho anywhere in the world. It is wrong to retrench civil servants, free employment of the young yet extend the term of the aging.
I ask fellow young leaders to start correcting these wrongs we see today instead of waiting to blame the World War Two generation for stealing our children's future. Someday soon, even the young will grow old and our children will ask us to hand over the keys to the nation's future. We ask our fathers and grandfathers to hand over our future to us. We ask for intergenerational justice. We are the leaders of the future and the future is already here.
Wainaina
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