President William Ruto
The National Assembly Special Funds and Accounts Committee has ordered the Ministry of Cooperatives to provide a detailed list of those defaulting Hustler Fund loans.
On Tuesday, the Committee called Cooperatives Principal Secretary Susan Mang'eni to provide the identity of the defaulters, stating their names, amounts owed, and their telephone numbers by constituency.
It was prompted by concerns raised by Migori Town MP Fatuma Zainab, who chairs the committee, over the high default rate of the Hustler Fund.
According to the committee, the Fund recently issued over KSh13 billion with a 78 percent default rate.
The committee insisted that the list would confirm whether details presented by borrowers during the process of registering for the facility were factual.
During the session, MPs faulted Ministry officials for not providing documents touching on 19 audit queries that were pending from the 2022/2023 financial year.
The Ministry blamed miscommunication and a previous shortage of personnel within the Hustler Fund.
The officials said they had been compelled to seek some guidance from the Auditor General's office because of the inadequacy in numbers.
However, lawmakers wanted to know how such a Fund could have KSh13 billion in disbursements and not be in a position to hire enough staff to track it.
Mbooni MP Kivasu Nzioka questioned, "How can a fund have KSh13 billion to disburse but lack crucial personnel to track it?"
It also emerged that the Hustler Fund was not insured, raising other concerns among MPs on how the Ministry intended to recover the loans that had turned into bad debt.
This follows an earlier statement by Cooperatives CS Wycliffe Oparanya in August, where he expressed that 19 million out of 21 million borrowers had defaulted on their Hustler Fund loans.
Oparanya reaffirmed that the Fund being public money, must be repaid to allow other Kenyans to benefit from it.
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