Hideous choices to be made after budget cuts

OPINION: IT’S EASY enough to sit at a desk and take a red pen to a budget, chop a few million here, a couple of thousand there…

OPINION:IT'S EASY enough to sit at a desk and take a red pen to a budget, chop a few million here, a couple of thousand there, until the desired bottom line emerges. But what does this mean for real people in the real world? As I sit here in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, I am faced with a dilemma, writes ANNE O'MAHONY

We are at the planning stages of our 2010 programme, and my budget has been cut. When the 2009 budget was cut, we discussed as a team how those cuts would be implemented. We agreed that we would do everything possible to prevent programmes being cut.

A major economy drive was undertaken. A few staff positions were cut and staff salaries were frozen, in spite of an inflation rate in Kenya of over 20 per cent. We used other measures such as cutting the training budget, not replacing old computers, and using car tyres for a few extra miles before changing.

The staff entered into the spirit of cost-saving with enthusiasm, and at the end of the day we achieved the budget cuts without cutting programmes. In doing so we managed to build a stronger team spirit, with a clearer focus on the main objective. Now the budget has been cut again and a programme will have to go – but what do I cut?

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The global economic crisis is hitting Kenya hard, with floriculture exports and tourism, the pillars of the Kenyan economy, being hit as Europeans buy fewer roses and take cheaper holidays. Flower pickers who earn less than €2 a day are being laid off in their thousands.

The increase in unemployment in Europe and the US is affecting Kenyans working abroad, resulting in a reduction in the money being sent home to their families in Kenya. The long rains have failed and the maize harvest, due next month, is now estimated to be well below what was expected.

This is a big blow, as we were hoping that a good harvest would reduce the price of maize to the slum population in Nairobi, who saw a doubling of the price of their staple food in the last year with no increase in income. They are struggling to survive.

In Kenya there is no social welfare and no safety nets of any kinds. If you don’t have money, you don’t eat.

A child who has Aids or is HIV positive and on anti-retroviral therapy needs a diet high in calories to enable his or her little body to fight the illness and absorb the powerful drugs. We at Concern are supporting thousands of children in Kenya with calorie-dense food, and since we got involved fewer children have died.

These gorgeous, mischievous children deserve a chance at life; they deserve to feel healthy; they deserve to grow into adulthood. If I cut this programme, how many of them will be around when the economy improves? Can I live with such a decision?

There is also the education programme. For children who grow up in the grinding poverty of the slums, education is the passport to a better future. There is a great hunger for education, with parents and children making huge sacrifices to keep children in school.

In the slums here, the largest in Africa, there are few government-supported schools but there are over 1,500 primary schools run by various organisations. All of these schools struggle to keep going, so children contribute by paying school fees. The people who can least afford to pay for education are those who have to pay the most.

Concern is working to get these schools recognised by the Kenyan government so that they can get sustained funding. We have generated some momentum and are starting to see success, but if we stop now we are in danger of losing the progress we have made over the last three years.

How can we stop when we are so close to achieving real change for some of the world’s poorest children?

There are also the pastoralists, the colourful Maasai, the Rendele, the Borana peoples, whose way of life is threatened by ever-increasing cycles of drought and who are at the coal face of climate change.

Our programmes work with them to install water points on animal and people migration routes, to develop improved animal breeding and care practices, and to look at off-farm opportunities for those who want a different way of life. We are a couple of years into this programme, and beginning to see some really positive results in the fight against hunger. If this programme is cut, we risk undoing all of that positive change.

It’s quite easy to delete figures on a spreadsheet. But it’s going to be terribly hard to look any of these people in the eye and say, “Sorry, you’re on your own now.”

  • Anne O'Mahony is Concern Worldwide's country director for Kenya