Graft exposes Kenyans to cruelty

As our leaders traversed the country seeking what can only be called blood votes, this being in the middle of a surging Covid-19 pandemic, the burial of a street boy was taking place last Friday, right in the heart of the capital city. Nearly all the mourners were from the street — apart from a representative of a charity that came in to help, albeit, sadly, a little too late. 

The street boy allegedly died of hunger. He had been starving on Nairobi streets, next to the hub of government. The boy was given his last dignity not by his government but ‘sufferer’ friends as one of the homeless people (derogatively called chokora) described his fellow mourners.

The street boy’s lifeless body was placed in a wooden casket with a simple silver embossing that the unusual pallbearers in tattered clothes carried it to the cemetery and interred it “without any prayers even”, as one of them said. This suggests that perhaps men and women of the ‘cloth’, who should naturally be part of giving the last rites to all their fellow human beings, don’t think the homeless are worth their time either. But again, this is Kenya, where only a few lives matter.

The charity representative who visited the boy in hospital before he died was informed the child desperately needed milk. She was astounded, as I am, that a public hospital or anybody working in it could not spare pocket change to find a starving boy a glass or two of milk. 

Lack of food for patients in public hospitals is something I’m aware of. I can attest to the fact that it comes in dribs and drabs, of poor quality, served with a dollop of cruelty that one could not associate with hospitals but alas! The Kenyan public hospitals I’ve visited serve poor food to patients so that somebody somewhere can get an opportunity to hawk chapati and boiled eggs in the wards. 

I witnessed that with jaw-dropping horror. Those with no money or well-meaning visitors are left at the mercy of austere catering departments that are a power unto themselves. They serve food whenever and however they wish. Woe unto desperately sick and bed-bound patients with no one to queue for them, or feed them, as the food trolley waits for no man or woman. 

It is, therefore, not a surprise that a street boy would die for lack of life-saving milk. Street families have been a challenge to successive governments. The government did eventually create the Street Families Rehabilitation Trust Fund. But your guess, dear reader, is as good as mine as to what happened to that money. The Nairobi City County even committed itself, to a tune of Sh40 million —  a drop in the ocean given the complex nature of homelessness — to “rehabilitate and reintegrate” street families into the community. 

Slated for embezzlement

Homeless people require psychological, financial and socioeconomic support for some years before they can be fully integrated. To paraphrase one of them, “what happened to the promised government support” if they are still in the streets starving, harassed and sexually abused? It doesn’t take a genius to guess that any money for street families, as happens with many ingenious projects for the vulnerable, is slated for embezzlement.

The plight of the poor street boy, who died, is shared by many Covid-19 patients, who have been left to their own devices as the government turns a blind eye to the looting of funds meant to cushion, especially the poor, from the pandemic.

Theft of Covid-19 funds is causing suffering in the community as patients and families struggle to access care. It’s reported that the few available ICU beds are full and oxygen supply is low in many county hospitals, leaving Covid-19 patients at the mercy of private hospitals, who are raking it in on the back of a desperate situation by charging unreasonably astronomical fees.

The scandal around Covid-19 funds should have been addressed with the severity it deserves and the money recovered as quickly as possible to support public hospitals, which are the only lifeline for the poor in this pandemic and beyond. The stolen funds could also have been used to buy enough vaccines for the country.

The government, therefore, has no ground to demand payment from Covid-19 patients in public hospitals with theft of funds and drugs happening right under its nose. The decision is not only inhumane, cruel and degrading but also legitimises corruption. 

Graft may be just a game for those in government but it has serious implications on the citizens who are on the receiving end of it. Many Kenyans are denied a chance to live with dignity and accrue socioeconomic benefits from money set aside for their education, health, security, water and shelter, particularly for the homeless.

Meaningless and empty threats to corrupt individuals shows lack of seriousness from the government in fighting corruption and exposes the cruel and insensitive way it deals with the citizens’ plight. Only swift legal actions, not mere words, can stop corruption.

Ms Guyo is a legal researcher. [email protected]. @kdiguyo