Unless the economy picks up considerably, what happened yesterday during the Labour Day celebrations is likely to become a common feature – workers walking out on the Labour Minister the moment he announced how much more they would be earning.

The announcement of a six per cent minimum wage increment did not, and was not expected to, go far enough to cushion the ravages of an inflation rate that has seen purchasing power eroded to the bone.

Last year, Mr Ngutu announced a seven per cent increment, a statistic that translated into a Sh140 raise. This was hardly enough to make a difference to workers forced to live below the poverty line. And we are talking here about more than 14 million Kenyans who cannot make ends meet.

With this year's increment, the minimum wage will rise to just over Sh3,000 from last year's Sh2,886. How anyone can be expected to subsist on such a figure for a whole month when their house rent alone accounts for half that amount is impossible to fathom.

Of course, expectations had been raised by unionists and politicians demanding higher wages. The Central Organisation of Trade Unions had asked for an 11 per cent increment, a far more realistic demand than the one by veteran trade unionist Dennis Akumu, who wanted the minimum wage to be fixed at Sh10,000, or the other by National Development Party leader Raila Odinga, who called for a 100 per cent increment to a more reasonable Sh6,000.

But the question is whether any of these suggestions make much sense, considering that our economy is, and has been for a considerable period, in the doldrums. The only answer to these expectations is to ensure our economy starts growing again, something that will require a lot more than the government can deliver by merely ordaining that workers be paid hefty sums. To do so would just fuel inflation, meaning that even the little the workers would get would simply go up in a puff of inflationary smoke.