The national government has bowed to pressure to extend the Kazi Mtaani jobs programme that currently employs at least 270,000 youthful Kenyans across the 47 counties.
The State Department for Housing and Urban Development on Friday, January 29 announced the extension of the National Hygiene Program popularly known as the Kazi Mtaani program.
The programme will now come to an end on date March 4, 2021. Youth working under the Cohort ‘A’ were directed to resume work on date February 3, 2021.
The Ksh10 billion program was conceptualized as a response with two main objectives. Offering employment to the youth to cushion them from the effects of the pandemic as well as improving health and sanitation in informal settlements.
Under the program, the youth are expected to work for a maximum of 8 hours five days a week.
The program is divided into two phases. In Phase I, the maximum number of days each individual works is 22 days.
In phase II, the maximum number of days in a month is 11days so as to give room for more youths to be accommodated in the program.
Payments are made once a week through mobile money transfer. Beneficiaries are paid an average wage of Ksh600 daily.
The first phase of Kazi Mtaani kicked off in April 2020 as a pilot program and focused on select informal settlements in 8 counties while the second phase expanding to cover 34 Counties was launched in July the same year.
The program hopes to roll out subsequent phases to cover all the 47 counties with more funding available.
According to data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) published in 2020, the highest proportion of the unemployed population in Kenya lies between the ages of 20 and 29.
The same age group also had the highest increase of over 10 percent each in unemployment in the six months that followed the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in Kenya (March-September 2020).
