Change has never been easy to adapt to. Most of the time it is received with a huge opposition before people calm down on it especially if touches on peoples budget.Mr Hinga has felt the heat of relaying housing project message to unhappy section of Kenyans.
Housing PS Charles Hinga was on Thursday forced to abandon his speech after teachers attending the 61st annual delegates conference at Bomas booed him.
Hinga had taken to the podium to enumerate the benefits of government’s ambitious housing scheme and why teachers should embrace it.
As soon as he begun his speech, teachers drawn from all regions started to heckle him and wave their hands in protest once the PS mentioned that the scheme was affordable.
“No, no,” chants rent the Bomus auditorium, forcing the Knut national chairman Wycliffe Omucheyi to intervene and calm down the irate teachers.
Secretary general Wilson Sossion had to step in after Omucheyi’s “order members, order” was ignored and the heckling was taken a notch higher.
“Okay members, this is the principal secretary and he is here as a representative of the government and the message has been communicated,” Sossion said.
“However, it’s only reasonable that we let him finish the last sentence only.”
But teachers would hear none of it.
The affordable housing project is one of the items on President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Big 4 agenda that targets to construct 500,000 houses by 2022.
The Central Organisation of Trade Unions already poked holes in the government’s National Housing Development Fund, opposing deduction from employees’ salaries before the necessary regulations and structures are in place.
Secretary-General Francis Atwoli said on Tuesday the fund meant for building low-cost houses has the makings of a scam. It is not clear what role employers and workers would play in the management of the fund, he says.
The governance structure of the fund, its implementation modalities and how companies with housing plans for their employees will be treated are also not clear, Mr Atwoli said.