The National Assembly in the 2018 Finance Act controversially passed amendments to the Employment Act 2007 introducing what is now dubbed the Housing Fund Levy that compels all employers and employees to each contribute 1.5% of the employee’s monthly basicsalary provided the total of the contributions does not exceed five thousand shillings.
The contributions are to be made to the Housing Fund. If one is not employed one may voluntarily contribute to the Fund with a minimum of shillings two hundreds a month.
The monies collected through the Housing Fund Levy are then supposed to be used to finance the Affordable Housing Scheme under the Big 4 Agenda of President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The Housing Fund Levy is a tax that was rammed down the Kenya employers and employees through a collusion between certain Jubilee MPs and ODM MPs in the Finance Act 2018. The employers and employees who are to bear the brunt of that tax were not consulted, no public participation as required by the Constitution was undertaken to give them a hearing and for those opposed to express their opposition.
So how many myriad of taxes must Kenyan employees and employers bear? That is the (employers and employees are) the easiest way for a government that is incompetent uses to run all manner haphazard policies driven by corruption. They cannot take a moment to internalize the heavy multiple taxes that the stagnant or diminishing class called employers and employees are already carrying. They are callous and heartless. They live on another planet.
The Housing Fund will, make no mistake, be converted into a gravy train for the corrupt cronies, of President Uhuru Kenyatta who are to implement the project to eat from and vomit on Kenyans through corruption. It is doomed to failure except for oiling corruption by those who be charged with implementing it.
The National Housing Corporation that will administer the Fund was conveniently removed from the Ministry of Lands that had since independence given oversight to the corporation and taken to the Ministry of Roads,Infrastructure Housing and Urban Development under none other than James Macharia. It is that same Minister being arm twisted to hand over Kenya Airports Authority to the bankrupt Kenya Airways so that it can pay loans using taxing payers monies to the Banks like Equity, CBA, KCB.
The Housing Fund we can state without any fear of contradiction will concentrate its operations in Nairobi and to the near exclusion of far flung counties lie those of the former Western Province. It will benefit only Nairobi County and neighbouring Counties of Machakos, Kiambu, Kajiado, Nakuru and may be the big towns of Kisumu, Mombasa.
That to qualify for a house as a contributor will be through a lottery, the way betting companies operate? The operation nerve centre of the Fund is at Nairobi and woe unto you in Counties in the Western region you will hardly smell a whiff of the fruits of the Fund whether in jobs created, contracts awarded, supply of materials to be used and all other benefits that will accrue from implementing the Housing Fund projects.
And so how many of the employees of the Counties of the former Western Province and Trans Nzoia County are likely to benefit from houses built by that Fund? Hardly any. The main employees in the region are teachers who already own homes and so of what benefit will the Fund be to them. We can predict as day follows night the fund will be yet another centre of corruption to pauperize Kenyan employees and enrich the corrupt elite that are cronies of President Uhuru Kenyatta given the Fund is under James Macharia who is the Cabinet Secretary who controls literally 40% of the budget of Kenya and followed by Dr. Fred Matiang’i with the Ministry of Interior controlling another 30% or so and the rest of the Cabinet Secretaries handling 30%.
The employers and employees of Kenya now only have the Courts of Kenya to save them from the grand scheme of corruption being put in place under the so called Housing Fund Levy. Time will tell how the saga evolves but we all must be fearful of the traps of the corrupt using public vehicle schemes like the Housing Fund to loot Kenyans who are in the intensive care unit of being suffocated with corruption.
