Nairobi,KENYA:The government under the ministry of labor social and protection has launched migration program of Inua Jamii beneficiaries to a new payment model that is designed to respond to challenges of timely access to the government-led cash transfer program famously referred to ‘Inua Jamii’.
The program system targets 70 years old age and people living with disability across the country that will be receiving sh. 4,000 after every two months.
The project that was launched in Kajiado county on Monday by Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yattan, will be rolled out in eight regions across the country from 22nd of December 2018 in phases. During this period, beneficiaries will be mobilized to present themselves and their caregivers to Program Officers where validation of beneficiaries and details of the caregiver are carried out to ensure that they are properly enrolled in the program.
The government said they came up with the idea of bank transfer instead of the old means of card system so as to restore dignity to the people where they can operate bank account like any other salary or business person.
” we have to use a number of checks in place, we have to use biometric that will show the eligible person and no other person,” said cs Yattan
“As a consequence of the high and rapid population growth since independence, the country is confronted by numerous social challenges including high incidences of poverty, age dynamics,” He said
The Cs further said that his Ministry currently is implementing 3 programmes under the Inua Jamii namely; Older Persons Cash Transfer (OPCT) covering 833,000, including 533,000 of 70 years and above persons enrolled into the programme in 2017; Cash Transfer for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (CT-OVC) which covers 310,000 households; and Persons with Severe Disability Cash Transfer (PWSD-CT) which covers 47,000 households.
He further said that in total, they are handling 1.3 million households where they are running a budget of 27 billion in this financial year of 2018/19.
” There are a significant number of eligible people who are not covered by the program because of resource constraints,” He is said.
In the process, the government has signed a deal with four banks that have a network all over the country to facilitate this transfers without transaction fee that include; Cooperative bank, Equity Bank, KCB bank and Post bank since they have a network all over the country.
The Cs noted that they selected on the first eight counties based on which sub-county is more deserving in terms of numbers and poverty rate.
However, cognizant of the rapidly growing population and poverty trends against the number of current beneficiaries, Cs said there is need by the treasury ministry to increase funding for the programme so as to adequately cover all eligible vulnerable persons in the country.
Cash Transfer programme plays is part of the country’s Big Four Agenda which is anchored on the pillars of manufacturing, universal healthcare, affordable housing, and food security.
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