TALKING POINT

The other day, my colleague at work initiated a debate on The Higher Education Loans Board, loans repayment terms and consequences of defaulting. He, just like many others, was a beneficiary of the money disbursed to university students upon successful application. However, he has not started repaying the loan and strongly feels the Board is frustrating unemployed youth with ‘hefty’ fines in case the repayment terms aren’t followed to the latter. HELB slaps former university students who do not start repaying the loans one year after course completion with a monthly fine of KSh5,000. Unemployment is an enormous crisis in Kenya, with millions of university graduates stranded with their degrees and diploma certificates scouting for jobs. Let me at this point call him ‘Jeremy’ – not his real name. Jeremy argued that the government was doing very little to aid the youth secure jobs immediately after graduating from tertiary institutions of learning. Many at times one only ...

On March 4, 2013, Kenyans went to the polls with a lot of optimism that the decision they would make by casting their ballots would transform their lives. Among the critical issues they wanted addressed were inequitable distribution of resources, inadequacies in health care services provision, unemployment- especially among the youth and corruption. The 2010 constitution came with the devolved units or counties. Kenyans were promised that devolution would spread development at the grassroots, as opposed to when financial resources were solely managed and controlled by the central government. Devolution, was also to create employment to the jobless at the remotest parts of the country. The idea of coming up with devolved units, methinks, was long overdue. Indeed change has been witnessed- in infrastructure development such as roads and provision of clean water for households. The youth, women and persons with disabilities have also benefited greatly through their ...