The Government is in the empire building business, not the empire killing business. I saw an interesting tweet: I am getting to that point whereby I’ll vote in anyone who vies and promises to stop Housing Levy and SHIF deductions. I immediately saw the flaw in the wish: your candidate will stand in the election and promise to abolish the Affordable Housing Levy (AHL) and Social health Insurance Fund (SHIF) deductions but the moment he takes office, he will abandon his promise and, instead, find a million ways to make you comply with the law. Let me illustrate with a story about the consequences of the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF).
When it was initiated in 2003, it was meant to facilitate greater citizen involvement in development decisions at the grassroots level, and complement the central-government-led development framework that revolved around the corrupt provincial administration. It was a resounding success in its initial stages and many citizen-focussed development projects were completed that immeasurably improved lives and livelihoods.
The model was thereafter expanded to youth enterprise development and women empowerment with establishment of the Youth Enterprise Fund (YEF) and the Women Enterprise Fund (WEF). These were later followed by the Uwezo Fund and National Government Affirmative Action Fund (NGAAF). Suffice to say, the Funds succumbed to the corruption that eventually took root in the Kibaki Government and they have concisely lost billions for years with little to no accountability.
Facing a severe cash crunch, in 2019 Uhuru Kenyatta's Government attempted to roll all the various enterprise funds into one, the Biashara Kenya Fund, and wind up the other funds by transferring their balances into the new one. Parliament was having none of it. The Funds had become empires unto themselves and nothing short of an act of God is going to wind them up. This is true of the Affordable Housing Levy and Social Health Insurance Levy.
The monies raised by the two new programmes is so enormous - tens of billions of shillings per month - that no one in the national executive or Parliament is interested in winding them up. So long as this Government stands and so long as its parliamentarians enjoy a majority in the National Assembly, Kenyans will pay through the nose for "affordable housing" and "social health insurance" even if the majority will never get an affordable house are receive comprehensive social healthcare.
The only time the Government abolishes one of its empires is when it is replacing it with another bigger one. The original NSSF was replaced by a new NSSF. NHIF was replaced by SHIF. CDF was replaced by NG-CDF (and all this in the face of judicial decrees). If Biashara Kenya had been structured as two replacements for YEF and WEF instead of one, it would have gone through without a hitch. The AHL and SHIF empires, with all their inequities and iniquities, are here to stay.
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