Reason Why Most Teachers Lack Interest in State Housing Plan
Reason Why Most Teachers Lack Interest in State Housing Plan. One of the key responsibilities of the government is to organize people so they can live decent lives by building facilities like markets, hospitals, roads, and basic social infrastructure like schools and clinics.
Planning across a number of government sectors, such as those dealing with international cooperation, education, agriculture, trade, energy, and sports, is how this is accomplished.
Planning provides a direction for action over a predetermined period of time. Plans can assist everyone in cooperating to accomplish objectives like improving service delivery and elevating citizen living standards. Planning improves resource use, and budgets and financing sources are identified in accordance with plans.
Plans promote diligence and commitment to work and service performance. Plans allow flexibility for better results while establishing performance benchmarks.
The National Development Plan’s Vision 2030 Strategy calls for 200,000 housing units to be made available annually to people of all income levels. This is done to make sure that working people, including government employees, have access to quality housing.
Kenya has only been able to supply 50,000 more housing units since the program’s inception due to a shortage of almost two million housing units, showing the government has not achieved the goal outlined in the National Development Plan.
The majority of the housing units will undoubtedly be occupied by the private sector, with 80% of them going to high-end consumers and the other 20% to middle-class occupants.
Between 2019 and 2022, the rate of rapid urbanization, which has raised demand for housing, infrastructure, and other related facilities, has remained constant at 4.3%. As a result of this pressure, 61% of city residents reside in slums. This suggests that the housing development could be quite beneficial in urban areas.
The Kenya Kwanza Government has placed a lot of focus on the affordable Housing Programme (AHP) in order to offer Kenyans, particularly those who reside in urban areas, with high-quality, secure, and affordable housing. homes for government workers and public officials whose earnings prevent them from affording good homes in urban areas is the aim.
Along with dwellings, the government anticipated that this would help provide jobs for masons, carpenters, plumbers, and electricians. With Jua Kali artisans making windows and doors and mama mandazi na chai pouring tea, the construction site would be a center for wealth and job creation unlike any other. Economic consequences of the initiative are expected to boost GDP from 7% to 14%.
Teachers and government workers were first introduced to the AHP in 2017, but it did not catch on since instructors were not properly involved in the introduction. At that point, the administration had requested a 1.5% deduction. Today, the government will reduce prices by 3%.
Contributors would be allowed to acquire the homes through a cooperative structure such as paying in installments, with a target audience of 700,000 public employees.
Teachers, government workers, and their unions have all vehemently rejected the housing plan and pushed the government to increase their salaries first. If nothing is done to boost teacher pay, there may not be enough money in the pay stubs to finance any new programs.
As a result, in the CBA for the years 2021–2025, the Kenya National Union of Teachers suggested a 60% salary increase to the employer.
The government should consider evaluating the statistics on various groupings within the teaching profession and deciding whether it is necessary to engage with teachers and their representatives in order to properly understand how it can operate the program.
Teachers should be consulted by their unions on issues that affect their daily lives. The government should always engage the public before making significant decisions that have an impact on people’s lives.