'Housing project has created 120K jobs in 8 months,' Ruto says as he vows to respect court ruling

President William Ruto has said the affordable housing project launched by his administration early this year has so far created 120,000 jobs.

The President who spoke on Tuesday during the International Trade Union Congress (ITUC) hosted by the Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) on Tuesday hailed the pilot project as a game changer in battling unemployment in Kenya.

“I took a long time to explain what we are going to do to create job opportunities so that we can have more workers, people and decent wages,” he said.

“There are three things I said I would do in my tenure; robust housing programme- not because we are looking for houses but because housing creates millions of jobs. I want to report that in the last eight months, we have created 120,000 jobs from our housing plan.”

The Head of State reassured that the controversial project would continue to create more vacancies in the job markets further projecting that by 2027, the plan would have created over 500,000 jobs.

“Kenya is a country of workers, as I told you, I have kept my commitment and we now have 120,000 workers. My plan is that by 2027 we will have half a million people working,” he noted.

He reiterated his recent remarks that Kenya was in talks with Germany to create more employment opportunities in the European country, adding that his regime was fast-tracking to leverage technology to create more opportunities in the digital space.

“We are working to increase the number of people working either locally, foreign or remotely, the whole concept is to increase more workers,” Ruto stated.

“We are also going to create more jobs around the digital space and technology space. As we are talking now, the Parliament is passing the NG-CDF bill so that we create ICT hubs in every ward in Kenya.”

Following Tuesday's court ruling that declared the Housing Levy unconstitutional, President Ruto said the government would endeavour to ensure that the contentious law follows Constitutional provisions.

"I know the court has said that we should go and re-adjust the law to align it appropriately… we are going to do that because if we don’t engage these people in productive work, they will become a very big challenge to all of us," he said.

A three-judge High Court bench on Tuesday ruled that the levy had violated Article 10, 2 (a) of the Constitution but still granted stay orders restraining the quashing of the affordable housing levy until January 10, 2024.

"We find that the introduction of the housing levy amendment to section 84 lacks a comprehensive legal framework in violation of Article 10 of the constitution, that levy against persons in formal employment without justification is discriminatory and irrational," Justice Majanja read the judgement.