Raila vows to revive mandatory housing levy initially proposed by Uhuru

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 18 – Azimio La Umoja One Kenya Alliance Presidential Candidate  Raila Odinga has announced that he will introduce the elusive housing levy to address the housing shortage in the country should he get elected in the August polls.

President Uhuru Kenyatta-led administration had proposed a mandatory levy but it met stiff opposition from other stakeholders led by the Central Organization of Trade Union (COTU) and eventually declared the levy voluntary.

Under the levy, Kenyans in formal employment  would have to contribute 1.5 percent of their gross salary as a housing levy

But Odinga now says that such a fund will be a key aspect of spurring the development of massive housing units across the country.

He noted that he had engaged the COTU in a bid to encourage them to embrace the housing levy.

“I have talked to the head of COTU, Francis Atwoli and he has assured me that they will cooperate with us, the Azimio government when we go into the office,” he said on Tuesday in Kisumu during the groundbreaking of Makasembo Estate where LAPFUND is set to construct modern houses

If elected, Odinga said he will roll out massive housing development in the country to address the gaps currently witnessed in the country.

“What is being done here today is basically responding to the needs of the large percentage of our people who have moved from rural areas and into the on as urbanization continues to escalate,” he said.

The presidential candidate further called upon the government to respond to the housing needs of its citizens.

He says a number of Kenyans who migrate from the rural to urban areas are living in abject poverty within the slums areas.

He says the rate at which informal settlements are growing up in the country is alarming, thus the need by the government to reverse the trend and put up low cost houses.

“People are putting up their own houses without any planning because they are desperate,” he said citing Nairobi where 60 percent of the population live in slum areas.

“This is something that needs to be arrested and reversed,” he said decrying that the same trend is taking shape in other towns where shanties are being used as houses as a result of people moving to urban areas in search of jobs.