More money for relief kitty, more problems for suffering Kenyans


WAJIR, KENYA: For 20 years, Abdi Adow’s life has been a painful routine. The resident of Wajir County suffers from paralysis as a result of a severe spinal injury.

Abdi Adow (left), 54, has not been paid his stipend for six months. PHOTO: PAUL WAFULA/STANDARD

He cannot stand upright. He struggles to wake up every morning in an empty one-room house.

The 54-year-old drags himself around his humble home doing basic chores.  His life depends on a wheelchair, but he can only move the wheelchair on his own for short distances on flat terrain.

Mr Adow pays people to do his laundry, to push his wheelchair to the toilet at night or have a 20-litre bucket of water delivered to his house.

Thankfully, the weight he has shouldered for years was partly lifted by the Government in 2007, when it started giving people with severe disabilities, the elderly, the urban hungry, orphans and vulnerable children a Sh2,000 monthly stipend to help them buy food and meet primary healthcare needs.

Adow considered himself lucky to have made it to the list of beneficiaries picked from over 7,000 cases in his county.

But six years down the line, the Sh12.5 billion safety net programme, which has now been expanded to cover the entire country and received an additional Sh22.5 billion from the World Bank, is growing more unpredictable by the day over its increasing list of beneficiaries. It is also being choked by bureaucracy.

A new raft of reforms meant to streamline the programme to make it more accessible and effective seems to have failed in easing bureaucracy and reaching the most needy.

An analysis of the new distribution plan shows a programme that has ignored recommendations that the “programme scale-up should be based on an analysis of the poverty levels and be informed by clear objectives and an expansion strategy”.

Official data from the Labour ministry shows that there are 236,700 beneficiaries currently in the programme. The Government plans to add 160,527 more in this year’s expansion.

Under the old system, transferring cash to beneficiaries was painfully slow. The new system has also inherited these bottlenecks as it scales up to cover all the 290 constituencies.

For instance, it took the National Social Protection Secretariat half the current financial year to decide how counties should share the new slots provided for in the current budget.

Transferring money from the Government to the beneficiaries under the Jubilee administration also took six months.

Initially, beneficiaries would line up at Postal Corporation of Kenya outlets every two months to receive the stipend. Beneficiaries would be paid Sh4,000 at once to cover the two months. But the system has broken down this financial year.


When we visited his home early December, Adow had not received a single penny for six months.

“I have not been paid since Ramadan but in my state, who do I complain to? I cannot go to Nairobi to ask for the money; I only sit here and wait, hoping that soon, someone will release the funds,” he said, tears welling in his eyes.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, when fasting is observed from sunrise to sunset. It was marked in July last year.

Adow is not alone. A number of beneficiaries we visited in Marsabit and Wajir – recently ranked among Kenya’s top five poorest counties – shared similar experiences.

Mohammed Ibrahim Abdule, a caregiver of four orphans under the programme in Wajir, said it was difficult to provide for his family when payments are delayed.

“I have received the money for about four years now. The last time I received money was in July last year and I got Sh4,000,” Mr Abdule said.

Beneficiaries under the programme in Marsabit County are also crying foul over the unexplained delays.

“The delays are killing us. Nowadays we can wait for seven months only to end up being paid for two months. Sh2,000 is no longer enough – the cost of living has risen significantly since 2007 and it is only fair that the cash is increased to match,” Dullochi Roba, a beneficiary in the older persons category from Helu Village in Moyale, Marsabit County, said.

Mr Roba has been on the programme for five years. Whereas the cost of living has nearly doubled during the period, the monthly stipend has only been increased by a third, from Sh1,500, when it started, to Sh2,000.  It cost Roba Sh53 to buy a 2kg packet of maize flour in 2007, today the same retails at Sh105.

“If you depend on this money, you are forced to live in debt when it is delayed because people no longer help you as they think you are being taken care of by the State,” Adow adds.

Fifty-year-old Ahmed Mahmoud understands only too well the pain of missing out on the payroll. Polio-stricken Mahmoud has been applying unsuccessfully to be listed on the cash transfer programme.

Rukia Ali, Wajir County Co-ordinator for Social Services, however, says that it is impossible for the programme to reach every needy case.

“Limited resources cannot allow us to reach everyone who qualifies to be on the programme. The vastness of the land, poor road infrastructure and the pastoralist nature of some of the communities here also makes reaching all the deserving cases a real challenge,” she said.

By PAUL WAFULA, The Standard

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