The Assistant Minister, Hon. Peter Kenneth;
The Permanent Secretary, Dr. Edward Sambili;
The Economic Planning Secretary, Mr. Stephen Wainaina;
Senior Director of Administration, Mr. John Nandasaba;
Chief Executive Officers;
Directors;
Heads of divisions/units;
Guest Speakers;
Ministry Staff;
Ladies and Gentlemen:
• Let me begin by thanking all of you for turning up for this second Ministerial Retreat. This retreat is meant to bring us together to mix freely, enjoy our drinks and in the process break ranks to work as a team.
• Let me take this opportunity to thank all of you for your support during my late Father’s funeral. I must admit that I got generous support both materially and morally. I was happy to see many of you personally attend the funeral. I must also in particular thank the Assistant Minister and the Permanent Secretary for leading others to personally join me at the funeral. Thank you very much.
• Ladies and gentlemen, let me also thank you all for your effort, cooperation and support that saw our Ministry improve in the recent performance rankings. As you have already heard, our Ministry ranked number 5 in the recent performance rankings. This was a tremendous improvement up from number 35 out of 37 during the first ranking for 2006/2007 which was released in 2008 just after I joined the Ministry. I remember when the results were released at that time both the PS and I left K.I.C.C without talking to each other. But later we met and reflected on the results and I requested the Permanent Secretary to call the Heads of Department meeting which I attended with just one message to them: that we had not done well and we have to do all that is possible to improve the performance ranking for the Ministry. The mood of the meeting was that the ranking did not reflect our true performance. We resolved to forget about the rankings and work together, address the little things that may have been the cause of the poor performance and make sure we do better. And the results released this week clearly demonstrate that we indeed kept our promise to work hard to improve the Ministry’s performance.
• Therefore as we gather here today during this second Ministerial retreat, I want us to congratulate each other for the perfomance and celebrate this performance (Can you tell the person next to you CONGRATULATIONS AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR EFFORT AND SUPPORT); and let us resolve to work together, pulling in the same direction and go for number one. It is not hard if you consider that we moved 30 positions up and what lies a head of us now is only 4 positions up. This is the promise that we need to make today, let it drive us every morning us we leave our houses to the office and let us work towards realizing it.
• Another issue I would like to emphasize here is that as Ministry we are mandated to provide leadership for national development planning and coordinating the implementatiom of the Vision 2030. Of course our mandate goes beyond this when you bring on board what the SAGAs and the speciaslised units/divisions/ sectcretariats like NEPAD, MDGs and PEC do. This role we are playing is very key to the entire country’s development yet it is not widely understood to many people outside the Ministry and to some extent some members of staff do not fully understand what our mandate is.
• My appeal on this is that we must go an extra mile to raise the profile of the Ministry in as far as its mandate is concerned particularly in regard to national development palnning and implementation of the Vision 2030. We have the Vision Delivery Secretariat which I want to urge to exploit the synergies within and outside the Ministries to ensure we are all implementing the vision. I would like our field officers(PPOs, DDOs and Program Managers) to assert themselves and make our presence felt. I want to urge VDS to link up with them quite oftenly to create more awareness on the vision so that other field operators both government and non government can be in position to prepare and implement plans that embrace the vision. Similarly, PEC, MDGs and others should continue to do the same. Our data processing departments (KNBS, MED and KIPPRA) must ensure to avail to us reliable information in time to do our planning. PEC and NCAPD activities are other key activities that go unnoticed. I want to urge these agencies to re-engineer themselves, be felt and deliver on their mandate.
• During the recent meeting of the Commission on Population and Development in New York, I noticed that population issues particularly Family Planning are beginning to take centre stage in global development discussions in as far as they impact on national developemnt. It was reported that Family Planning has been globally ignored and as result underfunded. The same applies to the Kenyan scenario where this issue is hardly mentioned yet it has a huge bearing on development. As a Ministry, we must re-visit it with a view to demonstrating to the people of this country its importnce and the future consequences of not paying attention to Family Planning matters. I am aware it is sensitive, but we will be doing a disservice to this country if we do not point out the future consequences of ignoring Family Planning from the national development planning perspective. I am sure we can be able to make an impact on people.
• I do not want to mention every department but the point I wish to emphasise is that there is nothing we do in the Ministry that does not matter. We should therefore do it well because as you know we are the Ministry to provide the direction for national development. If this country does not change for the better, we are among those to be blamed for the failure leave alone the leadership of this country.
• In this regard and as I conclude, I want to challenge each one of you, as you leave your house each morning to report to the Ministry, to ask yourself the question what is it that I am going to do today that will contribute to the success of the Ministry as a pace setter for national development. Let us be driven by the urge to change this country for the better and in the process we will find ourselves always shining when these performance rankings are announced.
• Some of you will be receiving recognition awards for good performance. I would like those awards to be taken positively so that they become a reason for competition for recognition amongst the staff. Let it not demonralise any one neither cause complexes where others feel better employees than others.
• With those remarks, I invite you to enjoy the rest of the Program to the end.
Thank You.