Showing posts with label Cost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cost. Show all posts
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Last Expense Cover for Unashig Members
Last Expense (def.): 1. Funeral costs or expenses; 2. The immediate financial obligations, both direct and indirect, thrust upon an individual or a family as a consequence of the demise of a family member -- or even a close relative.
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Last Expense cover has become an important focus of attention in the insurance sector, as funeral costs have, so to speak, mushroomed. Typically, though, insurers restrict Last Expense insurance to immediate family members. The idea is that it helps people to cushion those that they leave behind -- or, more generically speaking, those left behind by the departed -- against the financial horrors of burying the dead and recovering from the angst of bereavement, besides the flurry and added anxiety of looking for immediate and usually slippery help.
With a robust funeral expense cover, insurance theory suggests, no family should worry about who will help to overcome its loss and re-balance its material circumstances, even as the emotions take their winding course. No one (no family) has to be "known" in order to get financial and associated emotional relief at the worst moments of loss. Group insurance can temper the sense of helplessness and drift.
Unasi Insurance Agency Ltd is the vehicle designed by Unashig Members to help tackle the jeopardy of bereavement, which in the end confronts everyone who lives "long enough". It was registered on 17th July 2019 by the Registrar of Companies. It is wholly-owned by Unashig Kenya PLC. As required by law, it was issued a Licence by Kenya's Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA) on 27th August 2019. This allows it to operate as a legitimate Agency, and to expand Kenya's Insurance Space (as we intend to do). Its operations are spearheaded by Esther Warui, who was recently appointed by the Unashig Board as the Principal Officer. She reports to the Unashig CEO.
Unasi Insurance Agency Ltd has since received a Last Expense quotation from UAP/Old Mutual, which is the most attractive offer that we have seen so far via web searches. Members are asked to scrutinize its contents through the link given below. Then let's have a conversation on our WhatsApp platforms:
READ: Quotation From UAP/Old Mutual
A minimum of 80 Members (plus their families) is required to launch this scheme with UAP/Old Mutual. We believe that we will have the numbers to do so by mid-November 2019 -- or sooner if there is great enthusiasm. Instructions are given below for a simple format which Members should use to submit the family details indicated in the quotation.
Interested Members should send a full list of family members whom they wish to cover by email to:
unasi254ag@gmail.com
The list should contain:
1) The first and last name of each person to be covered,
2) Each person's date of birth (DOB) in this format: DD/MM/YYY.
3) Each person's relation to the Member -- i.e. Spouse, Biological Child (a maximum of 4 children only, each in the age-bracket of 3 months to 18 year, or up to 24 years if proven to be still in school), Birth Parent or Parent-in-Law.
The sooner we get the list, the sooner we can launch this cover.
WATCH THIS SPACE for Updates, including payment procedures and deadlines.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
TRAINING AND PRODUCTION IN KENYA'S HARAMBEE INSTITUTES OF TECHNOLOGY
By Mauri Yambo
[NOTE: This paper was presented at a Seminar on Education with Production in Kenya, which was held at Silver Springs Hotel, Nairobi, on November 24-25, 1988. The paper’s full title, then, was “TRAINING AND PRODUCTION IN HARAMBEE INSTITUTES OF TECHNOLOGY: Discussant’s Comments on Chapter 5 of the Sifuna and Shiundu Report.” It is reproduced verbatim below for the record only. While the HIT wave has long since passed, the conceptual and policy issues touched on here remain “live” to-day, some twenty years on -- as I see it]
I. INTRODUCTION
My comments are very brief and, deliberately, provocative. Brief because chapter 5 of the “state-of-the-art” review under discussion captures the core elements of the controversy surrounding the principle of training with production as it has evolved in Kenya. Provocative because – and I would like to say this as emphatically as I can – I see no reason to remain ambivalent about the employment implications for ex-trainees of the production units which have been established within Harambee Institutes of Technology (HIT).
I have chosen to concentrate my attention on this ambivalence (see examples of it on pages 106-107 of the review) as resolving/dissolving it is central to rationalizing practical, hands-on training within the institutes while at the same time maximizing self-employment opportunities in the catchment areas of the respective institutes. As I see it, the weight of the evidence already adduced empirically and logically in the available literature points clearly to the untenability of the view that production units are beneficial to the ex-trainees or the local communities. In other words, their opportunity costs far outweigh their benefits to the said target groups. Let me demonstrate this point by way of nine propositions.
II. NINE PROPOSITIONS IN SUPPORT OF AN ARGUMENT
PROPOSITION 1: The main beneficiaries of the production units are not the ones presumed – trainees, leavers and the local community – but rather the institutions themselves, their managements and, as Sifuna and Shiundu reveal (see page 105 of the review), the “outsiders” who hold shares in some of the production units. Contrary to the general impression one is given, the existence of these production units has not made any HIT financially self-sufficient to-date. There is still the old clamouring for community and donor funding.
PROPOSITION 2: The primary purpose of a training institution is to help trainees to acquire or enhance particular skills, not to make money or act as employer of the first resort to people it was supposed to deliver to the larger labour market.
PROPOSITION 3: By deliberately engaging in income earning activities in the local area, a HIT in effect competes with its own leavers, and enjoys undue advantage over them in that competition.
PROPOSITION 4: Production units set up mainly as revenue earners – that is to say, units “whose main goal is production” (page 89) – are by definition the negation of the principle of “training with production” or “production through training.”
PROPOSITION 5: No contract so far entered into by any HIT could not have successfully been completed by individual HIT leavers or groups/companies of leavers – if given the same opportunity. It is self-serving for HIT administrators to justify their monopoly of the larger contracts on the grounds that these are beyond the capabilities of individual leavers. Indeed, by monopolizing the larger contracts, HIT only retard the growth of a technically-oriented, indigenous, rural entrepreneurship.
PROPOSITION 6: If one takes into account the number of self-employment opportunities “denied” by the involvement of HIT in local contracts, one finds no proof that HIT have contributed to “increasing employment opportunities for rural people,” as claimed on page 107.
PROPOSITION 7: Extensive HIT involvement in contract work in time exacerbates migration to urban areas by – and even unemployment among – HIT leavers from respective local areas. One point is certain, no HIT has the capability to employ all the trainees it turns out, given current enrollment rates.
PROPOSITION 8: A less problematic way to generate revenue to meet development and recurrent expenses in HIT is to rationalize the fee structure, so that it more closely approximates the actual cost of providing training. This can be supplemented with periodic Harambees in which artisans and others gainfully engaged in the respective local areas can be expected to participate fully. The institutes can also benefit by opening up to more than just school leavers.
PROPOSITION 9: In order to give trainees the necessary practical experience, it is sufficient to set up what Sifuna and Shiundu (page 89) refer to as “production through training” programmes. The primary objective in such programmes must be to train, not sell products.
III. CONCLUSION
I conclude by re-stating the point I made at the beginning. There is no reason to remain ambivalent about the negative employment consequences of production units. Failure to address the issue forcefully at this time will only help entrench the mistaken view that production units are a savior to the HIT network, and a creditable source of employment for the leavers.
[NOTE: This paper was presented at a Seminar on Education with Production in Kenya, which was held at Silver Springs Hotel, Nairobi, on November 24-25, 1988. The paper’s full title, then, was “TRAINING AND PRODUCTION IN HARAMBEE INSTITUTES OF TECHNOLOGY: Discussant’s Comments on Chapter 5 of the Sifuna and Shiundu Report.” It is reproduced verbatim below for the record only. While the HIT wave has long since passed, the conceptual and policy issues touched on here remain “live” to-day, some twenty years on -- as I see it]
I. INTRODUCTION
My comments are very brief and, deliberately, provocative. Brief because chapter 5 of the “state-of-the-art” review under discussion captures the core elements of the controversy surrounding the principle of training with production as it has evolved in Kenya. Provocative because – and I would like to say this as emphatically as I can – I see no reason to remain ambivalent about the employment implications for ex-trainees of the production units which have been established within Harambee Institutes of Technology (HIT).
I have chosen to concentrate my attention on this ambivalence (see examples of it on pages 106-107 of the review) as resolving/dissolving it is central to rationalizing practical, hands-on training within the institutes while at the same time maximizing self-employment opportunities in the catchment areas of the respective institutes. As I see it, the weight of the evidence already adduced empirically and logically in the available literature points clearly to the untenability of the view that production units are beneficial to the ex-trainees or the local communities. In other words, their opportunity costs far outweigh their benefits to the said target groups. Let me demonstrate this point by way of nine propositions.
II. NINE PROPOSITIONS IN SUPPORT OF AN ARGUMENT
PROPOSITION 1: The main beneficiaries of the production units are not the ones presumed – trainees, leavers and the local community – but rather the institutions themselves, their managements and, as Sifuna and Shiundu reveal (see page 105 of the review), the “outsiders” who hold shares in some of the production units. Contrary to the general impression one is given, the existence of these production units has not made any HIT financially self-sufficient to-date. There is still the old clamouring for community and donor funding.
PROPOSITION 2: The primary purpose of a training institution is to help trainees to acquire or enhance particular skills, not to make money or act as employer of the first resort to people it was supposed to deliver to the larger labour market.
PROPOSITION 3: By deliberately engaging in income earning activities in the local area, a HIT in effect competes with its own leavers, and enjoys undue advantage over them in that competition.
PROPOSITION 4: Production units set up mainly as revenue earners – that is to say, units “whose main goal is production” (page 89) – are by definition the negation of the principle of “training with production” or “production through training.”
PROPOSITION 5: No contract so far entered into by any HIT could not have successfully been completed by individual HIT leavers or groups/companies of leavers – if given the same opportunity. It is self-serving for HIT administrators to justify their monopoly of the larger contracts on the grounds that these are beyond the capabilities of individual leavers. Indeed, by monopolizing the larger contracts, HIT only retard the growth of a technically-oriented, indigenous, rural entrepreneurship.
PROPOSITION 6: If one takes into account the number of self-employment opportunities “denied” by the involvement of HIT in local contracts, one finds no proof that HIT have contributed to “increasing employment opportunities for rural people,” as claimed on page 107.
PROPOSITION 7: Extensive HIT involvement in contract work in time exacerbates migration to urban areas by – and even unemployment among – HIT leavers from respective local areas. One point is certain, no HIT has the capability to employ all the trainees it turns out, given current enrollment rates.
PROPOSITION 8: A less problematic way to generate revenue to meet development and recurrent expenses in HIT is to rationalize the fee structure, so that it more closely approximates the actual cost of providing training. This can be supplemented with periodic Harambees in which artisans and others gainfully engaged in the respective local areas can be expected to participate fully. The institutes can also benefit by opening up to more than just school leavers.
PROPOSITION 9: In order to give trainees the necessary practical experience, it is sufficient to set up what Sifuna and Shiundu (page 89) refer to as “production through training” programmes. The primary objective in such programmes must be to train, not sell products.
III. CONCLUSION
I conclude by re-stating the point I made at the beginning. There is no reason to remain ambivalent about the negative employment consequences of production units. Failure to address the issue forcefully at this time will only help entrench the mistaken view that production units are a savior to the HIT network, and a creditable source of employment for the leavers.
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