Poor Families Face Tougher Conditions for Stipend

Business Daily (Nairobi)

George Omondi

3 June 2011

Poor families that have been receiving monthly stipends will be required to meet more stringent conditions as the government adopts a cash transfer model common in South American countries.

Under the new terms, recipients of the Sh12 billion kitty will be required to be more socially responsible by taking children to school, engaging in income generating activities like small businesses and giving back to the community by providing labour for community projects. Top Government officials from the Ministry of Planning, National Development and Vision 2030; and their counterparts from Gender and Children Affairs recently visited Brazil and adopted the model aimed at making the programme sustainable.

“We hope to fine-tune and expand the programme after incorporating the experiences of Chile and Mexico,” said planning Permanent Secretary Edward Sambili.

The cash transfer programme run by the government and Unicef gives guardians a stipend for the upkeep of orphans and vulnerable children.

A scorecard released last week for 2009 and last year showed that the transfers have significantly reduced poverty and reduced school drop-out rates among the beneficiaries. The report also showed that the programme catered for 85,891 households with a total of 300,619 people by end of December 2010. The initiative targets 300,000 households by 2013.

The surging inflation has, however, significantly eroded the impact of the programme which doles out the money mainly through M-Pesa, according to Unicef’s country director Olivia Yambi.

“If the cash transfer is to address inequality, it should be indexed to household size and adjusted regularly for inflation rates,” Dr Yambi said at a joint Unicef-Government forum last week. At present, the government through gender and social development ministry receives only Sh4 billion in support of the programme, out of the required Sh12 billion.

But since donor funds started drying up in the 2009 global economic crisis, experts have been calling for ways of making the programme sustainable.

Some economists have called for a revolving fund that beneficiaries have to repay but government officials favour the model of economic stimulus programme in which recipients are asked to work on projects for economic wellbeing of community.

“The new model will have some conditions to help recipients get into economic activities instead of just sitting to wait for more,” said Dr Sambili.

In Brazil, the cash transfer programme has significantly reduced poverty and social inequality according to UN’s International Poverty Centre, and gives several conditions that force recipients to meet certain ends.

The Bolsa familia, one such initiative created in 2003, disburses $50 every month to families with monthly per capita income of less than $40 (Sh3200).

Its recipients must however prove that their school-age children attend schools, have updated immunisation cards for children aged between 0 and 6 years while breastfeeding beneficiaries must attend health centres regularly.

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