Safaricom PLC entered into an agreement with the Kenyan government to suspend deduction of mobile credit debts, Fuliza for 48 hours. This deal was reportedly made in order to enable the youth under the Kazi Mtaani programme to receive their pay.
The ICT and Innovations ministry’s Principal Secretary (PS), Jerome Ochieng’ says that the government communicated with the firm, which agreed to the 48-hour waiver from the time payment is made to the participants. This was after realising that a huge chunk of the 283,000 youths under the Kazi Mtaani programme were indebted to Safaricom through the overdraft service.
“Before you cry of non-payment, please ensure that you do not have a Fuliza debt as the company will automatically deduct the money after the 48-hour waiver period elapses,” he said.
It is not entirely clear whether this opens up the service to all Safaricom subscribers. However, it would be interesting for you to test if you are in debt to the telco.
At the same time, the PS stated that the government plans to have all the 369 level four to level six hospitals interconnected by the end of the year 2022.
This is an initiative by the ministry set to improve health facilities across the country ensuring effective and efficient service delivery. We have seen various countries like China try to implement the same with 5G network as the main helper. Subsequently, easy and fast communication between hospitals has proven to be useful in the fight against COVID-19.
Additionally, this is also seen as the government’s effort to “mainstream ICT at the grassroots hence investment in infrastructure development to enable the public access government services online.”