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{
    "id": 1373696,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1373696/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 203,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mwingi North, WDM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Eng.) Paul Nzengu",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "levy for the employees. Already, people are struggling with the burden of paying the little salaries they have been paying. An extra 1.5 per cent has been incorporated, meaning an increase in the salary that they are paying. The other issue is eligibility to access this housing scheme. The definition of a social housing unit costing that much targets a person whose monthly income is below Ksh20,000. How can you save enough money to pay a loan for a house? The cheapest of those houses is going for Ksh2.5 million. Others are going for Ksh3 million. How many years will it take for someone who has an income of Ksh20,000, which has to be distributed between competing needs of the family, including food and other basic needs? The board is constituted to be able to distribute money to different groups or different implementors of the objective of the Bill. The board is supposed to give 30 per cent to the National Housing Corporation; 30 per cent to Kenya Slum Upgrading and Low-cost Housing and Infrastructure Trust Fund; 36 per cent to the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development; and two per cent to the collector, KRA and the administrator, the board. How is the board going to coordinate and control all these huge amounts of money that are going to be given to different bodies of Government? All these bodies have an administrative arm in their component as they implement the project. Why duplicate administrative costs in four different bodies of Government? I oppose but I know the tyranny of numbers will play against me. When that happens, why can we not have a centralised way of remitting money directly from the National Treasury to the implementors? Why do we have to break it down into three different implementing agencies? That is also going to impact the cost of implementing the project. Clause 21(2) says that a person qualifies to be appointed the Chief Executive Officer if that person has at least ten years of experience in a managerial capacity in affordable housing matters, finance, investment or banking sector. Why has this been deliberately left amorphous? Before you have experience, you must have the requisite academic qualification. Therefore, a CEO of a technical organisation must be a technical person. In this case, must be an engineer, architect or building economist so that they understand what is involved in building. Buildings have components like a strong foundation. If you give a quack and say that experience is required with no academic qualifications, it means that anyone who has experience can be employed even if they have been managing a brewing company, a hotel or a club. If we pass this Bill, the CEO must be a technical person who has technical qualifications over and above experience. I refer you to Clause 26 on the Corporation Secretary. There shall be a Corporation Secretary who shall be competitively recruited and appointed by the Board. A person shall be qualified to be appointed as a Corporation Secretary if that person holds a degree from a university recognised in Kenya. Why are we silent on the qualification of the CEO? On the eligibility question under Clause 31(2)(d), apart from what the Bill provides on such other information as may be determined by the relevant agency, why are we leaving the agencies to be the ones to determine? If we have a criterion on how people should qualify to benefit from this Fund, then the criterion needs to be set out in this Bill so that we do not leave it open for abuse by the relevant agencies that have been mentioned here. Hon. Temporary Speaker, I submit. Thank you."
}