Kenya: Pain for Civil Servants As Govt to Increase Rent for Housing Units

Nairobi — The Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning now plans to hike the rent of civil servants living in 56,892 housing units across the country.

The rent hike comes after 23 years as the last review was conducted in 2001 due to delayed refurbishment of the houses as they lacked sufficient funding to initiate the process.

Housing and Urban Planning Principal Secretary Charles Hinga told Members of Parliament that the plans are rife as she has written to the National Treasury seeking the permit to increase the rent.

“We wrote to the National Treasury on the rent issue and told them to allow us to increase it because we believe that its high time, we looked at this matter. The committee should note that the last review was done in 2001,” stated Hinga.

He had appeared before the National Assembly Public Accounts Committee chaired by Nominated MP John Mbadi to answer audit queries for the 2021/2022 financial year.

It emerged that millions were being lost in rental collection as the current rents on the housing units doesn’t reflect the market reality.

In Eastland’s area, civil servants were paying an average rent of Sh2,200, while those renting in Mbotela, Jogoo Road were paying Sh1,000 for a one-room house.

Civil servants living along State House road, on the other end, were paying Sh30,000 a month whereas the market price along the road charged anywhere between Sh80,000 to Sh100,000.

“You can imagine that there are people paying as low as Sh1,000 for a house. And whereas the average rent is Sh2,200 there are people paying more but this is still not enough,” said Hinga.

The financial shortfall facing the housing ministry has impeded the efforts to conduct the repair of the houses in the current financial year.

This was even as MPs were told that some housing units were so dilapidated to the extent that they couldn’t be refurbished hence they were not generating rental income.

“We are unable to keep up with best practice in the industry which is conducting refurbishments because our collections are too low to facilitate this,” noted Hinga.

Documents tabled by the Auditor General show that the ministry had experienced a Sh506,585,000 shortfall in revenue collections for the period under review.

The Ministry of Housing was expected to collect Sh1.4 billion from the 56,892 houses.

Hinga explained that several ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) had deducted Sh16,990,206 from tenants but failed to remit the same to the state department of housing.

“Rent is the easiest thing for MDAs to reconcile since they deduct it directly from employee. We expected them to remit the funds to us but they did not despite us writing to them and demanding for the same.,” he observed.

The Principal Secretary revealed that they have failed to meet the target as various county governments had claimed ownership of the houses.

Hinga pointed an accusing finger at the Intergovernmental Relations Committee (IGRTC) for failure to quickly transfer assets under the housing function.

“We have been having very many meetings with IGRTC because we agree that these houses belong to counties but they are still under our charge county government,” he said.