Sauti Sacco, whose majority members are from the State Department for Broadcasting, has planned a major restructuring and recruitment drive at the Nairobi head offices to conform with the rapidly changing digital technology.
The long-serving Chairman, Elly Ndwigah, informed members during the Nairobi branch education day that the organisation was also planning to transform the fifty-three-year-old SACCO to incorporate Front Office Services Activities (FOSA) in tandem with modern demands for customers and sacco’s best practices.
He told the members in attendance, at the Cardinal Otunga Plaza, that the society had allocated funds for an aggressive marketing campaign to recruit youthful savers to bridge the shortfall accrued from ageing and retiring members.
Ndwigah, however, expressed fears that some parastatals were brutally frustrating the society by failing to remit members’ contributions and deductions up to their retirement and asked the commissioner of cooperatives to urgently intervene in the matter.
He cited cases where a member of the staff of the state-owned Kenya Broadcasting Corporation could not access his shares and contribution to the society simply because the institution had not been remitting his deduction for over three years despite the deduction reflecting on his payslips.
He challenged the commissioner to act decisively to save the SACCO and members from further agony by compelling defaulting firms to pay up such deductions, which have accumulated to over Sh46 million.
“Despite numerous calls, follow-ups and meetings with the management at the state corporation, nothing tangible but empty promises have come out of such efforts as members continue to suffer,” Ndwigah retorted.
65-year-old Sammy Kiluva, who attended the meeting to seek redress with the Sacco officials, narrated how he was still waiting for his dues five years after retirement; simply, KBC management was reluctant to release his savings to enable the Sacco to process his dues.
He revealed he was shocked to learn that the corporation was not remitting his deductions to the society for close to four years, a factor that the Sacco chairman confirmed was the reason for the withholding of his savings.
“Having joined the Sacco in 1986 with contributions running for four decades with shares amounting to over half a million, I am left hopeless with nothing to show for it after my employer let me down,” he regretted.
The Sauti Sacco, one of the most vibrant societies and pioneers in the government cooperative movement, has for years attracted members of the media industry but has since widened their scope to attract members of the private sector.
By Wangari Ndirangu
