Labour Day is a civic holiday to celebrate the achievement of workers.
Yesterday’s Labour Day anniversary was unique, coming at a time when the country is experiencing intense levels of political polarization, high cost of living, hunger, and religious radicalization.
The shopping baskets for most Kenyans have become significantly smaller. Families are on the verge of starvation and malnutrition, with many facing the impossible choice between food, rent, transport, school fees, water, and medicine, daily.
Prospects of rapid economic recovery for Kenya and a better quality of life in the short run, appear grim. Mental and psychological pressures either at family unit levels or the workplace, with cases of suicides, homicides and cultism are on the rise as a result of the inability of the majority to meet common basic demands.
The public resentment over skyrocketing food prices and the high cost of living needs empirical intervention measures by the government of the day. The government needs to step in authoritatively and double its efforts in cushioning Kenyans against the sky rocketing food, farm inputs and fuel prices.
Read: Cost of Living Unlikely to Ease Despite Current Rains
The minimum wage has failed; it has not kept pace with the rising cost of living, causing many Kenyans to live below the poverty level. There is a need to adopt a minimum wage, that matches practically with the actual cost of living among the various cadres of the workforce.
The government’s borrowing spree has added an additional load on Kenyans. Unfortunately, much of the government revenue raised to service debts is lost to corruption, making the cost of doing business and living very high.
The stakeholders in the sector such as COTU and Consumer associations should focus on making Kenyans’ lives a little easier by putting in place policies and intervention measures to cushion the population against insecurity, scale the war against corruption, inflation, high cost of living, drought, ignorance and poverty.
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