The Government has today, Tuesday 16th April- 2019, announced that it will roll out its Low Cost Housing Fund Levy; effective this month.
This step by the government to push an unpopular, political housing scheme down the throats of the Kenyan workers is suspicious, ill intended and an unacceptable burden on the already overburdened Kenyan worker who is currently enduring amongst the highest taxes and statutory deductions in the world which raid our payslips each month.
The manner in which it passed in Parliament speaks volumes. It was undoubtedly unpopular and lacked moral support, no wonder those who purportedly supported it were too ashamed to defend it in the floor of the house. How will this teacher working somewhere in the interior of Kisii county benefit from a low cost housing scheme project being effected in Nairobi or any other town situated hundreds of kilometers from Kisii?
Kenyans are investment conscious and are known to be Keen on real estate and housing at individual level, who are these employees that the government imagines are so much in need of this scheme? Assuming the scheme becomes the first efficiently implemented project in a country where plundering public resources is fashionable, how many units will be done per month and how will the units be distributed such that each employee has a unit? How will the units be distributed factoring in the geographical working places of each employee?
What is the existing legal framework that will protect the interests of the employees?
© Laban Ouko – Chairman KUPPET KISII
