Michael Mundia Kamau
P.O. Box 58972
00200 City Square
Nairobi
Kenya

                                19th June 2005

      TENSION

Legislation that restricts Kenyan retirees from
drawing the bulk of their pension until they attain
the age of 55, as contained in the Finance
Minister’s Budget speech of 8th June 2005, is
misplaced and out of touch with reality. The
Government cannot claim that it seeks to safeguard the
welfare of workers on this one account, when it has
failed to create a conducive all round environment for
the Kenyan labour force as a whole.

Fortunes for the Kenyan worker continue to become
gloomier and more wretched by the day. Despite
assertions of higher economic growth and despite
continual and lavish pronouncements by the Kenya
Revenue Authority of exceeded revenue collection
running into billions of shillings, the general
situation in the country is far from being attractive.
For instance, the giant Kenya Bus Services Limited is
deeply indebted and appears headed for certain
insolvency. Seven hundred of it’s employees have
been laid off and part of it’s fleet has been
grounded. The sheer desperation of the situation was
further captured by the sacked workers’ demand for
payment of outstanding salary arrears. The Government
and Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU), have
done nothing to alleviate or arrest the fast
deteriorated situation at Kenya Bus Services Limited.
If the Government and COTU really cared, there would
have been prior intervention. The Industrial Court of
Kenya cannot also escape blame for failing to ensure
implementation of a salary award to Kenya Bus Services
Limited workers. One can only imagine the sheer sense
of frustration, futility and torture being felt by the
sacked Kenya Bus Services Limited workers, when they
further realise that they cannot draw their pension
contributions until they attain the age of 55.

The situation in other companies and sectors of
Kenya’s economy is not much different from that of
Kenya Bus Services Limited, and the entire country
needs to accept and address this gruesome reality.
Downsizing, outsourcing, cost-cutting and merging are
the terms regularly used nowadays, not just in Kenya,
but world wide. In lower and middle class Kenyan
households nowadays it is common to find parents,
guardians and offspring all at home, because of job
cuts. In situations that are deeply distressing, one
can find a laid off father aged 48, a laid off mother
aged 47, a laid off daughter aged 26, and a laid off
son aged 24. If the Minister of Finance is not aware
of these realities, then he had better sooner resign.
In a country that is yet to draw up sound structures
on the expansion of free enterprise and in a country
that is yet to lay down firm structures on affordable
accessibility of credit, extended and aggravated delay
in accessing one’s pension is untenable and
impracticable.

The flip side of it is also deeply distressing. Kenyan
parliamentarians received hefty lucrative increments
on Constituency Development Funds during the same
Budget of 8th June 2005. Kenyan parliamentarians will
not have to wait till they attain the age of 55 to
access the higher Constituency Development Funds.
Kenyan parliamentarians also mooted a scheme that
entitles all outgoing elected MPs to a pension, on
expiry of their five year terms. A great deal of
controversy was generated by the proposal, leading to
it being shelved temporarily, but not expunged. The
entire Kenyan Cabinet, including the Minister of
Finance, and the near entire Kenyan Legislature, is
therefore set to draw generous pensions sometime in
early 2008, two and a half years from now, as the rest
of the Kenyan labour force is being asked to wait up
to 30 years for their much less generous pension
packages.

If this country is growing, then many of us are not
feeling or seeing the growth. If the revenue base of
the Kenya Revenue Authority is growing exponentially,
many of us are not feeling or seeing this massive
growth in the revenue base. What we feel and see, is
gloom and uncertainty. After the fall of communism in
Eastern Europe 14 years ago, there was significant
economic growth partly manifested by major
infrastructural and real estate developments. South
Africa and China have also witnessed similar scenarios
in recent years. Kenya has not, and it is therefore
difficult to relate to the favourable figures being
bandied. Until tangible structural changes began being
felt by the general Kenyan populace, the Minister of
Finance requires to suspend any and all legislation
that strangulates scarce accessibility to credit by
the Kenyan worker, including torturous unnecessary
delay in accessing one’s pension.


Michael Mundia Kamau