Ruto Questions Uhuru’s 4B Gun Factory And Claims Its Better To Introduce A Garment Factory

While questioning the sense of investing Ksh.4 billion in a factory that would only create 100 jobs, the Deputy President said it would have been better to build garment factories that cost less and employ more people.

“We have recently inaugurated a firearms factory that cost Ksh.4 billion and celebrated the fact that it will create 100 or so jobs. This works out to an investment of Ksh.40 million per job,” he said in his Kenya Kwanza coalition manifesto launch.

President Uhuru Kenyatta launched the Ksh.4 billion factory, with a single-shift annual production capacity of 12,000 assault rifles in April last year.

The president said it will lower the cost of acquiring weapons for Kenya’s security agencies and establish a sustainable national security industrial base that provides jobs for the Kenyan youth.

Dr. Ruto, speaking at Kasarani Stadium on Thursday evening during the launch of his party manifesto, said that the country’s economic model is “fatally flawed” and wondered why no government has moved to sort it.

“The question is why we have stayed on this path, why the government did not heed its own clarion call to restructure the economy, why we would choose to manufacture guns rather than garments,” questioned Ruto.

The UDA party honcho was drumming support for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) saying they are an integral part of the economy.

“The Kenyan workforce is now in the order of 19 million people. Of these, just under three million, only 15 percent work in formal jobs in both public & private sector, with private sector employing two million and public sector just under 900,000. The other 16 million (85 percent) work in micro & small enterprises (MSMEs) both formal and informal,” he said…