Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1121822,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1121822/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 238,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Aldai, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Cornelly Serem",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1162,
        "legal_name": "Cornelly Serem",
        "slug": "cornelly-serem"
    },
    "content": "I cannot overemphasise the challenges that retirees go through immediately they retire from their workplaces. Quite a number of retirees go back to their rural areas as soon as they retire. As soon as you hit back to your rural area with no income, definitely, you are faced with one thing: you are faced with death and the challenges that come with stress because you have no income. Somebody who has worked for 40 years and expects to be paid a lump sum and a monthly stipend yet misses the same will die in a short period of time. You have a situation of an employee who has been earning a reasonable income of about Kshs100,000 a month. Then, all over a sudden when you retire, you are told that you will be chasing your retirement benefits for a period of a year, or that you are not even very sure of it. The proposal by Hon. Barasa that all of us will know that when we retire we have a timeframe of only three months or 90 days before you receive your benefits is the best thing you will ever have for a country. In my opinion, when we get to the Third Reading, I will be proposing amendments that we even reduce the period from 90 days to 30 days. Why should you wait for 90 days for money that you have contributed into a scheme for a period of 40 years? At least, it is an effort. At least there is a timeframe. At least you are certain. You will know that you will be getting your benefits at a particular time. Before we even discuss the timeframes, it is also good for us to understand the challenges that retirees go through as soon as they retire. In most cases, if you have lived in a city, you will want to transfer your belongings back to the rural area. How will you transfer when all your funds which you actually saved take a long time? It requires you to go and bribe some officials for your money to be given. If you have a teacher working in Moyale or in my Aldai Constituency, asking that teacher from Moyale to come to Nairobi to chase the money that they have saved for their lifetime is, in my view, unfair. I agree that it should be a crime for any scheme to hold money that you have worked hard for, unless all of us are in a different planet. If all of us are in this planet and most of us are in Kenya, we will all understand the challenges that retirees go through. My father worked for this country as a teacher for a period of 42 years. He passed away and my late mother also passed away without receiving a penny. Many families go through the same challenge. Sometimes retirees have no option. They do not know what to do in an event the beneficiary dies. I hope this House will agree with Hon. Barasa that it is unfair for somebody who has worked for a country to be a criminal or an offender when they go home—it is an offence or a crime for one to retire. All of us in this House, one way or the other, will be retiring. As we retire, I hope that we are looking forward to a system whereby, when we retire, we will be given our money when we want or require it. Having pension schemes that make profit every single year and every single month denying you what you have worked hard for is unfair. So, I support this Motion with a lot of passion. It is for the sake of those who have worked hard for this country and not been paid on time, especially the teachers—the teachers who work so much in the rural areas, teachers who wake up in the morning to make sure that our children get education. They ravage in poverty when they retire just because somebody in Nairobi can sit on their files. We have some crooks which I wish are exposed at some point. That you have to put some money in M-Pesa for your file to move just from the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to the National Treasury. Why should that be the case yet you have worked so hard and it is your money? You do not share it with anybody. Unless these issues are addressed, we will be having Kenyans suffering every single day without anybody looking into it and assisting our retirees. Maybe those who are sitting with our files do not know that they will also require assistance one day. But we do not want to ask for their assistance. We want a system that works for us. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}