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"speaker_name": "Sen. Billow",
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"legal_name": "Billow Adan Kerrow",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. Maybe I should seek the indulgence of the House to add that, the Act under which these regulations are made, Section 205 of the Public Finance Management Act, requires that these regulations be adopted by both Houses and within 15 days of their passing by the other House. So, if the other House passed them last week, by next week if we do not pass them, they will have lapsed and they become regulations. So, we have only today and tomorrow and then it has to go to the other House again for debate before both Houses adjourn. I agree with you that the regulations were laid on the table of the House last Wednesday, but I want to advise the Members that there are not many issues. By the time I take you through in ten minutes, I The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate think most Members will be familiar with all the pertinent issues and whatever changes the Committee proposes to make. The objective of the Fund is to give access to credit to the youth and women business and create self employment. The principle that it employs is the table banking and the revolving funds. The modalities for the Fund will be supported by the following structure: At the national level, we have the Ministry responsible for youth and women affairs. They will facilitate and oversee the operations of the Fund. Specifically, they will be responsible for capacity building. Then we have the Uwezo Fund Oversight Board at the national level to provide overall management, the design and oversight of the Fund. This will be supported by a secretariat at Nairobi, similar to the other funds that we have like the Women Enterprise Development Fund, the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF) and the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). Mr. Speaker, thirdly, at the constituency level, there is the Uwezo Fund Management Committee which is modeled along the CDF at the constituency level. The role of that Committee is to facilitate establishment of the committees to manage the Fund at the constituency level. At the constituency level, the membership of that committee is listed in those notes that we have provided there. There is the sub- commissioner of the county, the development officer representing the national Government, the district accountant and so on and so forth. There will be representatives from each of the wards in the constituency, representatives of the youth and the women in the constituencies, persons with disability et cetera. Then in terms of the amounts involved in the Fund, the total amount is Kshs6 billion. Out of that, 3 per cent will be retained by the Board for administration purposes which comes to Kshs180 million. About 8 per cent will be for capacity building of the beneficiaries. This is about Kshs500 million. The balance, which is about Kshs5.3 billion, is what will be available to the members. Of that amount, the proposal in the regulations is that all constituencies will share 75 per cent of that equally and the remaining 25 per cent will be shared out across the constituencies based on the poverty index provided by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. Mr. Speaker, Sir, of the total amount received by the constituency, the original proposal was that 20 per cent of it is earmarked for religious institutions that will use it as a grant to the youth and women within their jurisdictions. Of that amount, 75 per cent will be used as loans and 25 per cent as grants. However, as we shall see, there will be amendments proposed in this. One of the far reaching amendments that the National Assembly passed is to generally remove the religious institutions as beneficiaries. We will discuss why our Committee also thinks that probably that amendment should be retained. The Fund administration, therefore, is that it will be given as a loan of between Kshs50,000 to Kshs500,000. An interest rate of about 1 per cent to the maximum is proposed. However, the National Assembly in their amendments have passed that there should be no interest charged, but instead an administrative fee of up to 1 per cent be charged. That will be used by the constituencies to manage the Fund and, therefore, the interest will not be removed. The loan will be for a two years’ period after which it must be repaid within two years. So, I think it provides for a six month grace period before the payment is done. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate Mr. Speaker, Sir, in terms of eligibility by the beneficiaries, all the registered women and youth groups who are registered with the Registrar of Societies do qualify under these regulations. The youth membership must be between 18 years and 35 years of age; and the women groups must be made up of only women and not a mix of women and men. Preference will be given to groups that have been in existence for at least three months and they must be based in the constituency and operate on a structure similar to table banking or any of the other contribution based groups. They must hold a bank account and so forth. So, generally, that is the brief on the Fund itself. This was submitted to the National Assembly and they made quite a number of far reaching amendments. We will be proposing tomorrow at the Committee Stage some further amendments to some of those amendments. When we went through this, we did not change a number of amendments which have been proposed by the National Assembly. For example, some of the representatives from the Uwezo Funds Committee at the constituency level from the youth and the women will be nominated by the respective Members of the Parliament or the women county representative. In the same way the persons with disabilities will nominate their own representatives, the ward representatives will also nominate their own persons. So, we did not propose those structures, but there are some changes that we propose which we think are crucial. Mr. Speaker. Sir, let me point out that the Ministry did wide consultations on this before these regulations were submitted to the National Assembly. They consulted, for instance, the women members of Parliament under KEWOPA on a number of occasions. They also consulted the CDF committees and up to 25 women and gender organizations under the umbrella of National Women Steering Committee which include Maendeleo YaWanawake, Women Political Alliance, FIDA, Action Aid and so many young women leadership organizations. All those have been consulted. The National Youth Council, the Interreligious Council of Kenya and the National Commission for Persons with Disabilities. All those consultations were done including with the Ministries, departments and agencies. So, the final draft is what was submitted to the National Assembly and a number of changes were made. Some of the far reaching changes include removing the role of the Cabinet Secretary in appointing three persons to the National Uwezo Oversight Board. In their case, they are proposing that those appointments be made by the National Youth Council and the National Gender and Equality Commission. We will be proposing tomorrow that, that be reversed for the reason that this is not a parliamentary fund. It is a national Government fund and to get these institutions to nominate will make the process quite bureaucratic and make it very difficult to get a consensus on getting those names nominated. The other issue that is important is on the capacity building. The original draft regulations that you have propose that the oversight board at the national level conducts capacity building of the beneficiaries across the 47 counties but in clusters so that a number of counties are clustered in one area and so on. The reason is to encourage standardization on the type of content and curriculum so that all the beneficiaries get that kind of thing across. What the National Assembly had done in terms of the changes that are before us is that they have moved that responsibility to the constituencies and that the The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate constituency committees be the ones mandated and that, in fact, is one of the things that we will be proposing would be more ideal to be retained at the National Oversight Board. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the other thing that I think is important is the number of Government representatives in the constituency committee which was reduced from four to two. Being a national Government fund, we thought that when we bring our proposals, we will be retaining the number at four. For example, the sub-county member who is responsible for development planning really ought to be there in the same way that they are there in the CDF committees, and the district accountant who is one of the signatories should also be retained. We agreed with the National Assembly in our proposal to come that the sub-county commissioner be there as an ex-officio member. I think the other point I want to raise is that because of the interest of time, we do not expect to make any fundamental changes other than the ones that I have mentioned relating to capacity building and raising the membership, lowering the interest rates where the National Assembly had proposed that they eliminate it and replace it with an administrative fee which is agreeable to us. They also eliminated the requirement that when you submit your application, it should be accompanied by a recommendation from a chief or an assistant chief or from some business person or a religious organization. They have removed that and we also kind of concurred and in the proposals we have we are not proposing any amendments to that. Mr. Speaker, Sir, generally, those are the general outlines relating to the Fund. We are proposing in the amendments that to ensure that there is sustainability, every year, Parliament appropriates a certain amount of money to this Fund so that it becomes a revolving fund which will be there from year to year similar to what happens in the CDF, the Women Enterprise Development Fund and the Youth Enterprise Development Fund. This is a very important Fund which provides opportunities to our youth and women across the country. I need to mention that is a bit different in the sense that the process of applying for it and getting it is a bit easier than the ones which are now being administered by banks or those other institutions."
}