Plug loopholes in cash programme for the poor

Johnson Sakaja, a member of the Parliament's Finance, Trade and Planning committee. Photo/FILE

The decision by the government to delay the cash transfer programme targeting poor children and senior citizens is timely and offers an opportunity to correct mistakes that risked derailing the initiative.

Although the social safety-net concept was well conceived, its implementation strategy had major flaws that left it vulnerable to abuse and fraudulent dealings.

An obvious challenge would be how to determine the neediest and deserving cases to be enrolled under the programme. The architects behind this scheme seem to have bestowed excess faith on government administrative structures such as village chiefs and elders to determine the beneficiaries.

This would not have been helpful because these groups have their own biases and may not have the capacity to objectively determine who should be enrolled in the programme. Besides, they would be no guarantee that cash transfers would reach the actual targets.

We believe the government now has a perfect chance to reform the cash transfer programme and ensure it only benefits deserving cases.

Levels of poverty can be tested practically and scientifically by reviewing aspects such as expenditure and consumption patterns of individuals and families. The government has the capacity to do this through the household survey reports published by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) that capture the profiles of families countrywide.

The data by the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) and even Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) also could provide valuable information on the determination of who qualifies for the scheme. With such qualified information we would have an authentic list of beneficiaries to draw benefits from the scheme and help meet its overall objective of poverty reduction.

The actual mode of cash transfer should also be reviewed to limit the risks of pilferage. In the old system, cash was transferred to chiefs for onward remission to the targeted individuals. This wasn’t foolproof because it was difficult to tell if the money ever reached the targeted beneficiaries.

The actual transfer of funds should also be done through more efficient platforms such as mobile money transfers so as to limit the risk of involving third parties. The mobile penetration in the country is high and reaching individuals in the villages should not be a major challenge
.

The fight against poverty isn’t easy and we must ensure such safety-net programmes are water tight and beneficial only to the needy and deserving cases.