Ruto Explains Why He Piles Susan Nakhumicha With Demands [VIDEO]

Ruto revealed that it is Kenyans who pile immense pressure on him to deliver to them what he promised prior to the 2022 general elections

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Sep 25, 2023 - 14:05
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Ruto Explains Why He Piles Susan Nakhumicha With Demands [VIDEO]
Photo collage of CS Susan Nakhumicha and President William Ruto speaking during the flagging off of Community Health Promoters at Uhuru Park in Nairobi on September 25, 2023. /PCS

President William Ruto on Monday, September 25 singled out Health Cabinet Secretary (CS) Susan Nakhumicha while defending his decision to put pressure on his government officials to perform their duties.

Speaking during the flagging off of Community Health Promoters at Uhuru Park in Nairobi, the Head of State revealed that he has been demanding the Ministry of Health, which Nakhumicha currently runs, to step up in their mandate to deliver quality healthcare to Kenyans.

Ruto revealed that it is Kenyans who pile immense pressure on him to deliver to them what he promised prior to the 2022 general elections, thus he is forced to exert the same on all his government officers, including Nakhumicha's counterparts in the Cabinet.

"I want to thank the Ministry of Health, under the leadership of my good minister Susan Nakhumicha. I have been on their case, and we've had many meetings.

"I know sometimes I have put you under immense pressure but you understand that my employers have also put me under a lot of pressure," Ruto disclosed.

According to the President, Kenyans tend to lose patience when promises by a Head of State fail to bear fruit, disclosing the Goliath magnitude of his job, nearly more than one year since assuming office on September 13, 2022.

"Because you are my employees, I report to these millions of Kenyans so they are the ones who said this work must be done and done quickly," he went on.

Nakhumicha holds arguably Kenya's trickiest Ministry which has lately seen shocking scandals ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to NHIF to the KEMSA scandal involving a Ksh3.7 billion mosquito nets tender, the latter leading to the only sacking in Ruto's Executive so far, Josephine Mburu from the Principal Secretary of the State Department for Public Health and Professional Standards.

Many would attribute the CS's sharp-shooting character to the magnitude of her position as she embarks on restoring sanity to one of Kenya's most important ministries.

At the same time, the President revealed that his government will embark on collecting data from all Kenyan households by 100,000 health promoters who will help the hospitals analyse data for targeted service delivery, in a bid to equip the State with the health requirements of Kenyans.

"We are also starting the journey to register every household in Kenya so that we can have the information on the health requirements, health conditions, and prevalence of whatever diseases in every part of Kenya so that our health delivery will not be based on guesswork but on information collected by the promoters," read the statement in part.

"Every health promoter in Kenya, the 100,000 of them, will be equipped by the government of Kenya with a kit that will be used for making sure that they can access every household in Kenya. We have split every health promoter with 100 households in every part of Kenya."

The Head of State further noted that the promoters will be given kitties by the state and will be eligible for a monthly stipend paid in half by the National Government. County governments will settle the other half.

The Head of State launched the plan to hire Health Promoters in February with the aim of improving the detection of diseases at an early stage, noting that the data collected by the state will help his regime in achieving Universal Health Care (UHC).

President William Ruto, DP Rigathi Gachagua and Governor Johnson Sakaja visit a household and sample the Community Health Promoters' kits before the official flag-off on September 25, 2023. /MINISTRY OF HEALTH

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