COLUMN-LIFE TIPS 

By FAITH NDINDA

Hello Good people. It's a new year , and yeah we thank the  Almighty God for allowing us to be here to continue witnessing His goodness. It's a whole new year for us as at MWINGI TIMES , as we strive to always put our best foot forward to see the growth of our publication. 

I know we all have our resolutions for the year and I know one most common goal is to save up more than we did previously. We always start out well but in between we come across challenges that make us break our home banks before the year ends. 

We'll, some challenges need us to use our savings but some others can be overlooked. I'd like to share some saving tips with you so that you can see if this year will be a little bit different from the rest in terms of having something in your account.

Starting us off is knowing why we want to save. We shouldn't just save for the sake of it.

This is saving ,yes, but without a clear purpose of saving. What will you want to do with your savings at the middle or the end of the year? This purpose will always push you to doing better everyday.

Once you have the goal as to why you want to save, then make sure you have a budget. A budget is crucial especially when going out for shopping. It acts as a guide to avoid impulse buying and unnecessary expenditures. 

A budget also helps you to know how much you need to save per day or week.

Eliminate/avoid unnecessary debts. We all have one or two debts somehow that need to be settled. Remember that when you settle a debt, it's off your chest and you can focus on other things like saving.

The amount of money that could be going to debt payments could be channeled to your savings account. 

If in any way you could avoid unnecessary borrowing ,please do. This gives you an ample time since you don't have to divide all your money out to people just because you owe them.

Spend to save. This basically will require you to know that you can forgo something of a relative price without over spending as long it will serve you the purpose. You don't have to go for expensive things just to look classy yet you can get products for the same purpose at a considerable price.

Remember, spending is not adding more savings and reduction is quite faster than increment.

Cut unnecessary expenditures. If you have friends going for a vacation , you don't need to break a bank just so to fit in. If you don't have the plan of going for such ,just tame yourself. If you can have your lunch packed ,the better .

Save the money used to buy lunch everyday at work. We all know how takeaway meals cost and they can deprive you of a good amount of money. This doesn't mean that you can't buy lunch once in a week.

Don't be too hard on yourself in as much as you want to save. Learn to say no.

Keep track of your savings. As mentioned earlier , don't just save blindly. You could be writing down somewhere just to know the progress as time goes by. You need to know if you are still on track or not. 

A financial record will even motivate you to save more since it'll be able to help you calculate how much you've saved, considering you set goal.

Utilize on opportunities to earn more income. If you get an opportunity where you can earn some extra cash , why not? Go for it. Take that as an advantage to have extra coins in your account. Don't just rely on your end month salary. It comes with a lot of things to do especially on bills. Make sure that you don't waste your extra cash simply because it's not directly form your salary. Most of us tend to think that we should 'misuse' our overtime earned money carelessly just because it's not reducing on our wages. This will even encourage you to go for extra gigs to earn something more.

These are just few tips on how to go about this whole saving issue. If you haven't started out yet , don't worry . The year is still young. We have different ways of saving. Consider the one that favors you. 

I hope that you'll find this tips useful and of great help. Let this year be different for us ,financially.

The writer, FAITH NDINDA, is a budding Journalist with passion on Health and Lifestyle  matters

In an interview with People Daily, Mule said that his parents passed on in 1997. They died as they tried to cross the road. This was during political violence of the then general elections during the reign of President Daniel arap Moi.

"In 1997, I watched  both of my parents get knocked down on the highway [along Lang'ata road] while escaping an irate crowd of youths following the election violence that erupted that year.

The vivid picture of their lifeless bodies has forever been embedded in my head since then", he said during another interview with The Standard last year. 

It is the grisly demise of his parents that led to birth of Stephen Mule's stage name, Flossin Mauwano.

His dad was a military officer who was also polygamous.

A conniving stepmother plotted to marry his father's lawyer to disinherit Mauwano and his family. That was the genesis of his troubles.

After the death of his parents, the step mum attempted to burn the young Flossin Mauwano. Luckily, he escaped through a sewer and would call Laini Saba slums in Kibra constituency his new home, albeit temporarily.

Developing a thick skin

The survivor had to learn entrepreneurial skills early in life such as hawking.

When his step mother got wind of the news that Mauwano was getting cozy with Mercy Ndungu, the househelp employed in the family home, they were both thrown out.

He impregnated the young woman and they got a baby boy. That was when Mauwano was in form two. Earlier, the step mother unsuccessfully attempted to prevail on them to procure an abortion. She had arranged the plan with a doctor.

A partly hidden writing of Flossin Mauwano on the road.

When the son was born, the family called him Nairobi Musembi. This was in memory of hard street life in one of Africa's biggest slums. 

As a way of giving back to the community, he took part in road safety campaigns which he promoted by use of graffiti drawings. This helped save lives as government officials  erected signage to direct road users while driving or walking.

The fiasco around house help and the young artist led to the arrest of Flossin Mauwano. He spent some months in jail. It is the jail time that distilled his character. It would later inform his music compositions and the graffiti art he's famous for.

Flossin Mauwano is not alone in the road safety campaigns. Other young people help him pass the message.

However, he was arrested during one of his sensitization of road safety activities via graffiti and was charged with being a vandal. He says he was misunderstood.

The rapper also does interior design and painting.

STORY By MUSYOKA NGUI

Kitui Deputy Governor Augustine Kanani on Wednesday said the County government will fund the education of poor students to the tune of Sh.120 million.

He said his boss Julius Malombe was commited to support needy students from across the county through the Pro-poor programme.

“In the 2022/2023 supplementary budget, the county has allocated Sh. 120 million to support needy learners in efforts to boost education standards in the county,” said Kanani.

He said this week the county government will conclude the public participation exercise on the Pro-poor programme that is scheduled to take place at the village level and ward headquarters.

The Deputy Governor spoke at AIC Kitui Township when he presided over the flagging off of this year’s Wings to Fly program supported by the Equity Bank.

Twenty four bright and needy students from different parts of Kitui County have been picked for the Wings to Fly programme.

Kitui Equity Bank branch Manager, Francis Mbindyo, said this year's Equity Group Foundation (EGF) in partnership with Equity Bank and KFW of German will offer 1,000 wings to fly comprehensive secondary school scholarships in Kenya.

He said the beneficiaries must be bright learners from financially challenged backgrounds who sat for their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education exam in 2022 and scored 350 marks and above.

The occasion was graced by community members who serve in the community scholarship selection boards as well as parents and guardians as well as teachers.

STORY By MWINGI TIMES CORRESPONDENT

The government has been undertaking many projects, infrastructure facilities and also constructing many public institutions in the region. 

Tharaka Ward MCA in Kitui County Godfrey Muthengi Ndangara moves a motion of county importance on the proposed construction of High Grand Falls Dam in Tharaka and Tseikuru Wards in Kitui County by the national government on November 23, 2022/Courtesy 

Some of the key and notable institutions include the Tharaka University construction and operationalization in Gatunga, the ongoing development of Tharaka University College in Thagicu, Tseikuru Technical Training Institute, and the proposed KMTC schools in Tharaka North and Mwingi North constituencies.

Key roads include the Kitui-Kibwezi road, the Mate Road that connects Embu, Tharaka Nithi and Meru counties and other smaller projects like the lighting of urban areas. 

These projects will acquire new meaning and utilization once the proposed High Grand Water Falls dam at Kibuka in Tharaka constituency is operationalized in the next two years or so. 

The dam will lead to increased human activities and also more attention from the government in the area and hence becoming a development attraction in the region. 

The government is also in the process of establishing the Kitui-Kathwana-Meru metropolitan authority once the Metropolitan bill is revised in parliament. This means there will be a development corridor running from Kitui-Mwingi-Kathwana- Chuka-Nkubu and Meru urban areas, which will lead to massive investments in infrastructure and service delivery. 

The role of government in development process since the advent of neoliberal theories and also the Washington consensus after the 1990’s has been to play an enabling role in the process through provision of infrastructure and other critical services. 

In particular, the World Bank in 1993 advocated for complete delinking of government in provision of services and goods that the private sector or organized citizens through business could provide. The role of government has therefore been confined to provision of an enabling environment through legal, regulatory, institutional mechanisms, in addition to provision of infrastructure, monitoring and evaluation and setting of standards for provision of such infrastructure and services. 

Once these projects and infrastructure have been provided, we expect that the residents of the region will use these to improve their own lives through increased focus on businesses that can be opened in and within these institutions and along the infrastructure that has been provided. 

People are realizing the importance of investing away from Nairobi and other big urban areas because of the high costs of accessing land and also labour costs in such urban areas. 

Developers and experts agree that the region has a lot of untapped potential in business that needs to take advantage of the developed institutions to create businesses that will employ our people and also lead to faster acceleration of development. 

The combined population of the region is 3, 280,057 persons (Meru – 1,545, 714; Tharaka Nithi, 393,177; Embu 204,979; and Kitui 1,136,187) persons from the 2019 Kenya Populating Census. This in addition to the expected influx of people from other regions due to the expected projects and infrastructure from the region makes it important to engage in more business activities since there is a population to support that. 

Some of the businesses that need to be set up by the private sector include hotels and restaurants with adequate accommodation. This will support the tourism sector that has not fully been exploited in the region. As they do this, we need more investments in the tourism facilities including lodges, recreational centres and conference centres within the urban areas of the region. 

These should go hand in hand with the development of the real estate sector to ensure investments in housing units to accommodate officials coming into the region to work for various agencies. Cottage industries can also be developed in the region through the private sector, including enhanced mining of the immense minerals in the region that includes calcium carbonates for cement making in Mui basin, the iron ore mining in Mui basin, Kithiori and Mwimbi areas of the region. 

Residents should also get titles deeds for their land so that they can get better deal when leasing or releasing their land to developers or the government. They should also increase their agricultural outputs through more crop and animal rearing since the market for the same will keep expanding. 

Lastly, the county governments in the region must be able to prepare sustainable and well planned and implementable third series of County Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs) that will cover the period 2023 to 2027. 

The residents must fully participate in the CIDP and the fourth Medium Term Plan (MTP IV) preparation for the entire country, processes which are currently ongoing. They should give specific priorities that will enhance further the development of critical and missing infrastructure and projects like connection of Kibwezi road with Tharaka division in Thagichu and also in Tharaka constituency among other sectors. 

These should be prepared also in line with the Kenya Vision 2030 development blueprint that has been aligned to the Bottom -up economic transformation agenda of the current administration, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030; the African Union Agenda 2063 and also the East African Community agenda 2050. We should use these processes to make devolution grow and work for the region since it has an immense promise to turn our economy around. 

OPINION By Dr. Mutegi Giti, Urban Management, Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and Environment specialist, Nairobi, Twitter: @DanielGiti.