Increasing NSSF contributions only fair if the agency is reformed

Whenever Kenyans are facing a situation similar to one they had witnessed before, they find comfort in the adage that history repeats itself.

History does not repeat itself per se. We repeat the mistakes we made because bad mannerisms are inculcated in us. We are a nation of liars sewn together by a golden thread of corruption that runs through all the sectors of the economy.

Our politicians harbour evil intentions of gaining from the poor through manipulation or by taking advantage of their ignorance.

Nothing that Kenyans are going through now is new. We have gone through them all amid promises that the situation will get better, only for it to get worse.

In the 1980s, we had to put up with a bad economy, and it was thought that newer and younger leaders will make things better because they understand the changing global trends and are more educated, but Kenyans got in to a worse situation under them.

Their ideas are the same old ones packaged in beautiful language, and ringed with the buzzword technology. They are not ready to reform institutions that have been in the muck of corruption for decades, but want Kenyans to sink more of their savings in them.

Take the current case of the National Social Security Fund (NSS) which has been a cash cow for decades.

Some of the people named in the financial scandals that rocked the fund several decades ago are living off their ill-gotten wealth, while families of those who put their monies in the fund are taken round in circles by bureaucrats.

The clarion call for increasing contributions to the fund are being fervently made but no one is talking about the past pilferage of these funds.

It would have been prudent to initiate reforms and then tell people about increasing their contributions, but no, it is better to put the horse before the cart, so that cronies and politically connected Kenyans can benefit from the sweat of lower cadre workers.