Soipan Tuya denies approving choppers for Cabinet Secretaries to go plant trees

Defence Cabinet Secretary nominee Soipan Tuya has responded to claims of facilitating extravagant resources such as choppers to her colleagues during the national government’s countrywide tree growing initiative when she served in the Environment docket previously.

Soipan was nominated by President William Ruto as Environment CS in 2022 and served in the ministry until last month when the Head of State unceremoniously fired his entire Cabinet after weeks of anti-government protests.

The President then recently nominated her to the Defence ministry while reconstituting his Cabinet, swapping her with Aden Duale who took over the Environment docket.

Speaking when she appeared before the Committee on Appointments for vetting on Thursday, Soipan said her primary role during the tree growing initiative while serving in the Environment ministry was confined to coordination.

She went ahead to intimate that any Cabinet Secretaries that traversed the country in choppers while executing their mandates as assigned in the whole-of-government approach to the tree planting programme did so out at their own conveniences.

“My main role as CS for Environment in the tree growing activity was really coordinator. In the coordinator role when I was CS for Environment, we did not make any provisions for transport or logistical arrangements for Cabinet Secretaries when they were doing their ministerial activities around tree growing,” she stated.

“So any Cabinet Secretary who travelled by chopper or road, it was outside of my mandate and scope and therefore I cannot speak to that. In terms of resources, I had no mandate to resource anybody to go out and plant trees.”

Soipan however noted that the concerns of extravagance by ministers during the project was also noted then and were addressed during a Cabinet meeting, where it was resolved that the grassroots sectors take the lead.

“During the second national tree growing programme, and having noted a number of concerns raised by Kenyans around the heavy presence of helicopters and the heavy spending around tree growing, we addressed that at Cabinet level and made sure that the exercise was very grassroots centered,” she said.

“You will appreciate that the nature of the ecosystem restoration programme is that it has to have everybody on board; from individual Kenyans, private sector, and all government agencies. So it cannot be the preserve of only the Ministry of Environment, and that is why we were very heavy on the whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to the tree growing programme.”