Some of the youth employed on the government’s economic stimulus programme Kazi Mtaani cannot be paid through their mobile phones because their lines have been blocked for failure to settle Fuliza overdraft loans.
Others have had their pay withheld because they provided the government with mobile numbers belonging to their relatives, which do not match the personal details they provided to evade money paid being scooped up to pay the Fuliza overdraft.
The payment hitch, disclosed in a report by the National Assembly Committee on Labour and Social Services, shows just how the youth are addicted to mobile loans that are easy to access in small amounts but are priced higher compared to credit from banks and saccos.
“Some youth had blocked or frozen numbers due to having taken Fuliza loan from Safaricom,” the report says. “Some used IDs that belong to other family members. The challenge is that the details provided do not match their ID numbers, resulting in pay delay.”
The Kazi Mtaani programme has been marred with pay hitches, the program entails youth being hired for 11 days and getting compensated at a rate of Sh455 per day. This is down 30pc from the Sh650 daily wage rate when the short-term employment programme was launched on April 29.
The government decided to use M-Pesa, the most popular mobile money service, to pay the young people in a convenient way that also reduces risk of handling cash in the wake of the highly infectious coronavirus.
“Payments for workers under the Kazi Mtaani programme are made via mobile money and it has been noted that some workers’ details may have had errors which resulted in their payments not going through,” Housing Principal Secretary Charles Hinga last week assured workers who had seen the delays that the problem had been identified.
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