Cabinet has stopped Chief Administrative Officers and district youth chairpersons as signatories of the Youth Livelihood Programme (YLP) and increased its fund up to 20 per cent of the national budget.
The Cabinet agreed that CAOs, together with district youth chairpersons have contributed too much to sabotaging the YLP because of the bribes they have been asking from the youth who requested for this money.
In 2013, the government introduced YLP, purposely to help poor and unemployed youth to connect their social-economic potential and to increase self-employment opportunities.
Initially, the government through Ministry of Gender disbursed over Shs265 billion. However, according to the performance reports from the two Financial Years (F/Y); 2013/2014 and 2017/ 18, there are indications that CAOs and district youth chairpersons have always been soliciting for bribes from the youth groups.
When Cabinet sat on Monday they noted the performance of youth livelihood programs and also approved the performance improved measures to be incorporated into this programme.
While addressing journalists on Tuesday at Media Centre, government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said Cabinet analyzed and identified the major challenges faced by YLP.
“One of the problem that the programme is facing is that youth who are unknown to each other are required to come together and form a group of 10 people in order for them to get his money,” said Opondo, adding that in many areas, youths have been saying that they find it difficult to look for 10 people they have never met.
In order to sort this challenge, the Cabinet reduced the number of group members from 10 to five.
“These five members must not come from the same village, but they should be from different parishes as long as they come from the same sub-county,” said Opondo.
Other changes the Cabinet introduced was that the money will be disbursed directly to the group’s bank account.
“Currently the money has been taken to the commercial banks and among the signatories to the commercial banks is the CAO and the district youth chairperson who have no relationship whatsoever to the enterprise which borrowed the money,” added Opondo.
According to Opondo, many of the youth who have been getting this money spend again some reasonable amount in buying officials at the district
“Since money will be disbursed to their project account this will stop since all the group members will be signatories to their accounts.
Finally, the Cabinet also approved the increment to YLP up to 20 per cent from 10 per cent of the national Budget.
Through the innovation processed at the Ministry of ICT, the abinet also approved the use of technology as a monitoring tool for the money disburse and the projects of the beneficiaries.
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