Labour Day has always felt like a bother for the government. Yes, State officials could use the holiday, but they would rather spend it in some other place and not in the company of mostly minimum wage earners who hope to get a hike in their pay, however slight it may be.
It is no wonder that Labour waziri Alfred Mutua’s written speech sounded like it had been written by someone chasing a word-count quota, and had just discovered new English words.
What else would explain him mentioning all the names of those who earned a seat away from the sun when he could have just dished out the customary “all protocols observed?”
Then the use of words like “steroids” in his opening line.
In case you missed it, Mutua or Alfie said in other quarters that his Labour ministry was “on steroids to ensure labour, blah blah blah.”
Whatever he meant with that, only he knows. However, he might have just explained why his ministry appears messed up. Steroids are known to cause delirium and other related complications.
That explains why Mutua, a waziri in a third world country that can’t find jobs for his people, believes he can “create jobs abroad,” as he proudly declared in Thursday’s May Day celebrations in Nairobi. Delulu!
Alfie has a strange fetish for “abroad” stuff. As governor of Machakos, he constructed an office that resembles the United States’ White House. That was in 2020, when he hoped to fascinate a woman who would later ditch him for a rapper. At the time, the 54-year-old was in charge of affairs abroad.
Indeed, his dreams materialised when he was made the Foreign Affairs minister, the link to the majuu people, in October 2022. He left a delible mark at the ministry, hence most people would struggle to remember his tenure as Waziri wa Masuala ya Nje.
Perhaps the most memorable bit of his stay there was the false promise he issued about creating jobs for Kenyans in Canada. Alfie’s obsession with jobs abroad started way back. Word has it that Mutua is yet to move on from his switch to the Labour ministry, hence his reluctance to create jobs locally.
During the Labour Day event at Uhuru Gardens, Alfie would also say that he had dismantled cartels and rogue agencies in the foreign jobs sector and conveniently omitted the fact that the government had swiftly filled the void left.
Last week ushered news that the State had officially adopted scamming, perhaps as a way to raise money. Several young Kenyans told a Senate committee about the government’s cash-for-jobs scheme, more common with human trafficking agencies.
We won’t know whether or not the government is pursuing human trafficking as well until Tuesday, when Mutua will be responding to claims he dismissed Thursday as “fake news.”
These claims include families selling off livestock to support a dream of one of their members, who believes the grass is greener overseas.
Others spoke about how they quit their jobs after getting assurances that they would not ‘eat’ last Christmas in Kenya.
From the multiple accounts, it seems the foreign job seekers were charged Sh55,000 for the imaginary jobs, which would only exist in the mind of a person hooked on heavy drugs. Like steroids. The new scammers would want to appear less brutal than the usual ones by refunding Sh40,000 to victims who don’t secure the airlift. The remaining Sh15,000 is a non-refundable medical fee.
Expectedly, Mutua denied that the scam victims, who heeded an employment drive he announced last October, had been part of “government processes.”
“Those are people who are being taken advantage of by people who are conning Kenyans because of desperation,” he said, a statement that sounded more like, ‘‘We sympathise, but we move on.”
Swindling the masses is not entirely new to the government, and that is why State officials appear like naturals in the sport. Politicians are ever fond of making promises they forget the minute they escape their mouths.
As spokesperson in the Mwai Kibaki era, Alfie learnt the government’s most important government policy – deny, deny, deny!
Mutua has experience in the make-believe world of film, where he was free to toy with characters as he pleased. Unfortunately, he has taken the joke too far and wants to turn desperate Kenyans into his Cobra Squad cast.
By Brian Otieno