Labour Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui revealed that the government is set to cushion laid-off employees by offering stipends.
In an interview with Citizen TV on Tuesday, June 9, Chelugui noted that over 50,000 Kenyans who were rendered jobless due to the pandemic will be paid by the government.
"As a Ministry, we have been working together with the industries and employers to come up with a list of potential vulnerable employees for purposes of social protection.
"The Covid fund which was launched recently has been engaging our people and we are developing our list, so far over 50,000 former employees are in that bracket and we are making final arrangements to see whether we can give them some stipends," explained Chelugui.
According to the latest projections by the International Labour Organisation 1,779,374 jobs are likely to be lost. The government has however marked 5.8% that require social protection.
The former Water and Irrigation Cabinet Secretary provided a breakdown of the 50,000 who will get stipends from the government.
"Majority of them are in the informal sector, we are considering urban areas particularly counties of Nairobi, Mombasa and possibly Mandera, these are locked down counties.
"There are people involved in tourism-related activities who through actions done by the government means there are no more tourists coming into the country and these are also part of our bracket for consideration," noted Chelugui.
The tourism and aviation sectors have been the most affected due to the closure of airports and limited movement around our borders.
A number of redundancies have been announced by various sectors in the industry and the Ministry continues to receive them through the toll-free contacts.
The government had projected that vulnerable individuals would be cushioned for a period of three months after which a review would follow but the pandemic shows no signs of abating.
The government had previously moved to cushion vulnerable households by offering Ksh 1,000 per week to cater for their basic needs.
