Questions abound over Kenya's mega delegation to COP 28 amidst austerity measures

According to a statement from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) detailing the list of participants, Kenya ranks 12th with the most delegates.

The report shows that Kenya has 763 delegates in attendance out of the total 97,000 from 195 nations. Of these, 368 are party delegates, while 397 are overflow delegates.

Citizen Digital has observed that among those in attendance, led by President William Ruto, are First Lady Rachel Ruto, Second Lady Dorcas Rigathi, Prime CS Musalia Mudavadi, Environment and Forestry CS Soipan Tuya and Attorney General Justin Muturi.

Other CSs include Rebecca Miano (Trade), Njuguna Ndung'u (Treasury), Aisha Jumwa (Public Service), Alice Wahome (Water), Senate Speaker Amason Kingi, State House Spokesperson Hussein Mohammed and COTU Secretary General Francis Atwoli.

About 13 Governors, Senators, MPs, State House staff, Principal Secretaries (PSs), government officials, county staff, Personal Assistants (PAs), advisors, and researchers are also in attendance.

Topping the list of countries with the most delegates is the United Arab Emirates with 4,409, followed by Brazil with 3,081, and then China and Nigeria, who have both listed 1,411 participants.

According to the UK-based Carbon Brief, the attendance numbers are almost twice the number that travelled to Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt for COP27 last year, the previous largest in an almost 30-year history of summits.

Head of Public Service Felix Koskei in September opened the lid on the worrying wastage in the public service and the glaring misuse of public funds by government officials.

Koskei  ordered the immediate stoppage of unjustified foreign or domestic travel and directed all government offices to hold their retreats within the capital, Nairobi.

All finance directors in all ministries were also directed to revise their annual budgets and present the budget cuts for re-allocation.

This was after the Controller of Budget released a report that exposed wastage in government as billions of shillings were being paid to government workers as allowances and air tickets.

In the report, over the last nine months alone, the government spent a whopping Ksh.20.37 billion on travel with domestic travel gobbling up Ksh.14 billion and Foreign travel taking up Ksh.6.3 billion. 

Subsequently, President Ruto said in late October that his government has reduced travel expenditure by up to Ksh. 11 billion.

Ruto also directed that travel budgets for all three arms of government be slashed by 50%.