Street families in Eldoret town will be among the more than 8,000 youths to be recruited under the social protection programme in Uasin Gishu County.
Uasin Gishu County Commissioner Abdirisack Jaldesa said the county Kazi Mtaani implementation committee approved the inclusion of the street families as they formed some of the extremely vulnerable members of the community in the county.
Speaking at his boardroom during a meeting with the steering committee Wednesday, the county commissioner said the programme will be implemented in 21 informal settlements in the county where 8,003 youths and 267 supervisors will be recruited to work on various community projects.
“We shall ensure that only the most deserving youths drawn from the locality of the identified informal settlement will be recruited,” he said and warned that they will not allow any politicization of the programme.
Jaldesa said the National Hygiene programme was initiated by President Uhuru Kenyatta in an effort to improve livelihoods in the informal settlements by cushioning youths from extremely poor households from the effects of Covid-19.
“This is a social protection programme aimed at cushioning the youth from the very poor families from the adversities and hardships caused by the effects of Coronavirus. The youths will be engaged in productive work and earn a stipend to put food on the table,” he said.
The CC directed sub-county commissioners to closely monitor the recruitment to ensure undeserving people were not recruited, “only the deserving cases should be considered and not relatives of village elders, government administrators or politicians”.
The Kazi Mtaani programme is being rolled out to all the 47 counties following successful piloting in eight counties. The youths to be recruited will work in two shifts of 11 days monthly. Supervisors will be paid Sh 505 daily while the workers will get Sh. 455.
Jaldesa asked the committee to focus on legacy projects, ‘so that by the end of the six months we can identify and say, this is a community project that was successfully implemented under the Kazi Mtaani Programme’.
Some of the projects targeted include rehabilitation of Sosiani River, cleaning of markets, unclogging of drainages, giving a facelift to playing fields in public schools and Road repairs among others in slum informal settlements of Huruma, Munyaka, Langas, Jerusalem, Ngomongo, Kamukunji, and others.
By Kiptanui Cherono
