Kenya's 1.5 Percent Housing Levy Deduction Sparks Anger

There has been an angry response in Kenya to a decision by the authorities to introduce a new salary levy to help build low-cost homes.

Kenyans online, especially on Twitter, aired their disapproval on Wednesday after the government yesterday ordered employers to deduct 1.5% from salaries to fund the affordable housing project.

The hashtag #ResistHousingFundLevy is trending since morning.

President Uhuru Kenyatta big four agenda has affordable housing as one of its core pillars.

Some have argued that this is not the way to do it since Kenyans are overtaxed and most of the taxes is lost through corruption, which the president himself is complicit.

The Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE) yesterday stated that the move to introduce the levy is against a court order, which suspended its introduction pending a hearing on the FKE's objection.

The president should tackle corruption first and ensure that public money is not lost even through well-meaning schemes, such as the Kimwaror and Arror dam, School laptops scheme, e.t.c., which turn out to be useless in the end.

Here are some tweets we sampled.

https://twitter.com/abuamaramin/status/1118287530326200321

https://twitter.com/JKNjenga/status/1118431176547553281

https://twitter.com/kirigwi/status/1118377548512206848

https://twitter.com/ItsMutai/status/1118373243809927170

https://twitter.com/qthuku/status/1118457631591608320

https://twitter.com/GakeniaNyakio/status/1118119425528532993

One user suggested a different form of boycott, a creative one.

https://twitter.com/wmnjoya/status/1118444267104546816

READ: We The People: This Is How We Can Liberate Kenya