The Kenyan government, through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is set to provide a daily income for more than 10,000 jobless youths living in informal settlements in Nairobi.
The initiative dubbed Kazi Mtaani National Hygiene Programme (NHP) will be rolled out across 23 informal settlements countrywide in phases to provide more than 26,000 youths with immediate job opportunities.
Already, 10,600 youths living in Nairobi’s Kibera, Mathare, Mukuru and Korogocho slums have been enlisted for the first phase of the initiative.
The youths will be undertaking daily sanitation and environment preservation duties in their respective settlements.
Principal Secretary Charles Hinga said some of these duties will include street cleaning, fumigation and disinfection, garbage collection, bush clearance and drainage unclogging services.
“The payment structure is aimed at providing a daily income and this is why workers will be paid at least twice a week through mobile money transfers,” said Mr Hinga.
He added that phase one of the programme will deliver wages for the next one month.
Hinga noted that the initiative has been conceptualized to provide social relief by providing jobs and facilitating hygiene interventions to help contain the Covid-19 pandemic in informal urban settlements.
The first phase of the NHP programme will also focus on informal settlements in the counties of Mombasa, Kiambu, Nakuru, Kisumu, Kilifi, Kwale and Mandera which will see the enlisting of 26, 148 Kenyans.
“These counties have seen the first instances of COVID-19 and have been affected by the cessation of movement policy initiated to contain the spread of the virus. The containment strategies have affected economic activity, making it difficult for those reliant on daily work to meet their basic needs,” said the PS.
