Fuel Guzzlers

Ministers and other senior government officials have until the end of Wednesday to surrender their fuel guzzlers together with their logbooks and tools to the Chief Mechanical and Transport Engineer and replace them with Volkswagen Passats as directed by treasury.

In a circular issued on Monday, finance Permanent Secretary Joseph Kinyua said the directive was in compliance with a government policy announced by Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta during this year's Budget speech.

The government officials are at the same time supposed to collect new official vehicles from CMC Motors.

But CMC CEO had earlier indicated that the first fleet of 130 Volkswagen passat cars would arrive between November and December this year.

Several ministers and government officials however are yet to comply with the government directive aimed at reducing fuel expenditure with only 24 ministries having complied so far.

But the directive that limits usage of government vehicles to 1800cc capacity exempts the President, the Prime minister and the Vice President.

The government is set to spend some 500m shillings to purchase new standardized Volkswagen cars of 1800cc and save up to two billion shillings annually on fuel and maintenance costs of the fuel guzzlers.

The Government had initially set a deadline of September 30th, but this was not affected as a task force appointed by the Finance Minister was putting final touches on the austerity measures.

The deadline is subject to wait and see owing to the fact that some ministers are opposed to the move and that Uhuru's predecessor Amos Kimunya failed to make the same directive a reality.