Interns under Kenya’s Affordable Housing Programme are yet to receive their stipends following what has been described as a payroll processing error within the State Department for Housing and Urban Development.
Principal Secretary Charles Hinga confirmed the delay, acknowledging that the issue has affected not just interns but other staff as well.
“It is true, the interns have not been paid and no one has been paid actually, even myself,” Hinga admitted, attributing the delay to an internal payroll mix-up.
Two Budget Streams at the Center of the Mix-Up
Hinga explained that the confusion arose from the department’s dual funding structure. Payments are processed from two separate sources, the exchequer allocation from the National Treasury and funds generated through the housing levy under the Affordable Housing Board.
According to the PS, the interns’ stipends fall under the housing levy budget and were scheduled for disbursement by the 25th. However, an error occurred when the two payrolls were merged during processing.
“So there was a mistake when they combined the two payrolls, the exchequer one and then the one for the interns,” he explained.
The complication meant that intern payments were inadvertently tied to the exchequer payroll, which depends on disbursements from the National Treasury.
As a result, interns who should have been paid earlier were forced to wait for Treasury funds to be released.
“They were not able to disaggregate the two payrolls and so they were told to wait for the exchequer to be sent,” Hinga said.
Government Assures Payment by Thursday
Despite the delay, the PS maintained that funds for the interns are already available and that the issue is purely administrative.
“The money is there. It is just some mix-up that happened in HR,” he clarified, adding that payments are expected to be processed once the exchequer funds are received.
Hinga has now assured affected interns that all pending stipends will be disbursed by Thursday, bringing relief to those impacted by the delay.
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