Written By John Mutiso 📝
The Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) and The Institute of Social Accountability (TISA) Kenya have filed a lawsuit against the government.
The petition was filed in court on Thursday, May 5, 2022, against Cabinet Secretary for National Treasury and Planning Ukur Yatani and Attorney General Kihara Kariuki, requesting information on Kenya’s debt.
“The Cabinet Secretary, National treasury and Planning has been increasingly borrowing money on behalf of the national government and Kenyans, and has taken expensive loans bilaterally from States, international financial institutions, and corporations over the past decade,” they said through a press release seen by Uzalendo News.
The lobby groups argued that the National Executive has also floated bonds both domestically and internationally as means of raising funds.
“However, the processes of borrowing through loans and raising sums through the floating of sovereign bonds has not been transparent as the Kenyan public is not involved in the process and is only left to rely on stories from the media,” they said.
The petitioners opted to go to the High court after their request for the aforementioned information through a letter dated February 7 was ignored.
“Despite constitutional and legal provisions that require public disclosure of all aspects of public borrowing, the National Executive continues to operate in an opaque and shadowy manner,” they said.
The overall concern that triggered this litigation is that the Cabinet Secretary, National Treasury, and Planning continue to borrow in the name of the Republic of Kenya without being accountable to the public and without availing documents related to the borrowing to the public.
They questioned the government for continually borrowing despite an uproar among Kenyans concerned by the ever-increasing cost of living.
“The obligation to make publicly available these documents to the public is paramount since it is a constitutional and democratic requirement for citizens to engage actively and meaningfully on public finance and debt matters,” the civil societies said.
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