A friend called me to assist taking his old and sickly mother back home after a grueling day spent trying to present identity details at the registration centre for senior citizens who are recipients of social security stipends.
What I encountered is so traumatising and I am lost for words but won’t keep quiet.
Hundreds of old people, some on crutches, carried or assisted by caregivers, helplessly sprawled around the registration centre compound, forlorn, hungry, disheveled, sickly, presented a grim picture of Nazi Germany concentration camp.
The shock was unbearable. How on earth could government officials live with this treatment of old people?
Replicated across the country, millions of aged citizens are being subjected to untold torture and mistreatments under the stipends programme.
I am made to understand that what I witnessed at this particular centre is what the aged go through every other month when collecting their stipends at various banks in the country.
Make no mistake, I am in no way undermining this generous and good programme by the government.
Far from it. I am highlighting the manner of implementation, which for lack of better words is inhumane.
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government has targeted old people to benefit from this social security programme for a reason.
Many old people above 70 years in the country have little or no sources of incomes and the government initiated the stipends system to assist this most vulnerable group.
It is therefore a pat on the back for the President and his government.
That as it may, the implementation of this laudable programme is wanting.
Does the ministry concerned thinks that compelling old people to queue for long hours at the mercy of weather is the best way to manage this programme?
Has the ministry failed to moot an alternative method to ensure the aged are able to receive the stipends without torturous matches to paying venues?
Surely, no government official expects President Uhuru Kenyatta to micro-manage the implementation of this programme.
It behoves the officials concerned to think outside the box and devise realistic and workable methods that put into account the needs of the aged to ensure this programme is a blessing and not a curse to the stipend recipients.
Since the inception of the programme, it breaks heart that no such efforts have been made and the vulnerable in society are made to suffer in the name of being assisted to live comfortably.
In my view, the details of recipients are availed to the government through a vigorous, thorough and corruption-free exercise.
Such details are authenticated by local administrators and Social Services officials before being fed into the data bank.
One would then think that the use of technology could ease, quicken services and eliminate fraud but in the case of this programme, fear factor overrides all other considerations.
The programme is also exposing how government agencies are poorly interlinked in sharing information.
If the current exercise is to determine those recipients who may have passed on, what is difficult for the concerned department to liaise with the Registrar of Deaths department and obtain such information?
In my understanding the availed information could then be forwarded to respective local administrators and social services personnel for authentication.
Furthermore, if such exercise requires extra labour, the department concerned could employ jobless graduates for the duration of the exercise.
This is not impossible to plan and budget for because data details cleaning is not an emergency.
Moreover, the same should happen to how the old people are receiving the stipends.
Personally I don’t understand how it is impossible to employ personnel who can physically pay the stipends to only the sickly and too old citizens in the comfort of their homes.
If someone convinces me what I am suggesting is impossible and pointless then I rest my case.
Whether this is done or not, the fact of the matter is that an excellent idea can be contaminated by an equally bad idea.
Let us sympathize and empathise with the aged after all the same officials who are reluctant to rectify the implementation system of this programme might one day find themselves victims of their own mistakes when they become senior citizens.
What goes around comes around.
Kaunda wa Muchunku
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