The Kenyan Parliament recently passed the ICT bill that that requires the training, registrations licensing and a standard for practitioners in this field.
This is one great step for ICT in Kenya. Although every sane person distanced themselves from the bill, somehow the Bill managed to sail through parliament after three attempts. ICT practitioners were almost denied an opportunity to enjoy the covering of the great Bill. Luckily, a few sleepy MPs passed the Bill and the rest will be history technology.
Why is this Bill so good? Several reasons:
Taxes
Taxes are the backbone on which our economy is built. In fact, the person who claimed that a country cannot tax itself to prosperity should come to Kenya in 2030 and see. We need Kenyans to pay taxes.
By creating a registration body for ICT practitioners, it will be easy to tax them and ensure that these dark lords who make money from thin air contribute to the national development. The register will help KRS to go to their offices and demand a fair share of their tax obligation. This way, Kenya can pay the Chinese debt faster.
Jobs
If Kenya sets up a body to register ICT practitioners, the body will need some staff, offices, will have tenders, and will often hold seminars in big hotels. What does this mean?
Political leaders will be able to propose their close allies to occupy senior positions in the organization. Those who get those jobs will then hire their kins for the lower positions. This is the best way for politicians to reward their supporters while giving them an opportunity to reward people close to them. Besides, these will also be given a target on what to achieve before the next election to fund the campaigns.
Make ICT Great Again
Once upon a time ICT was great career. Some nerds who looked out of this world would play with the keyboard all day and make insane amounts of money. This changed.
Today, people from little known colleges located on third floor of Imenti house can now have diplomas in ICT. You definitely see what is wrong with this.
The Bill will ensure that these people go through hell and won’t be registered until they can show evidence that they possess one functional kidney. The registering board will harass them until they give up and go back to farm in the villages, leaving a select few to enjoy the cake.
Keep Poor People off ICT
It is such a disrespectful state where a Kenyan from Mutomo goes to Mutomo Primary school to enjoy free primary school, proceeds to CDF Mutomo Mixed secondary school and enjoys free secondary education, then gets a laptop, learns Python and Ruby then gets a job with Google in Ireland. That guy just freeloaded on our education system and is now making more money than a non-corrupt senior civil servant. Unacceptable!
Such success stories must be stopped. The ICT practitioner bill will require such a person to join a reputable University and study many useless things before they can get a job. If they are poor, they should just focus on pastoralism because that is how the society works. ICT has disrupted societal order but the bill will correct that.
Ring Fencing
The ICT field has been suffering from influx of professional refugees from other careers. People who majored in Zoology while knowing well enough that there are no jobs for zoologists in Kenya end up becoming web designers. This has been eating into the job market for the real IT graduates, and the Bill will put an end to this.
This also provides an opportunity to set the scale of fees for the ICT profession. Kenyans have been getting their websites done at Aslan Afrika Limited for only KShs 10,000. The Bill will stop this and ICT practitioners will set a minimum charge for a website – something like 64,000 – making them rich.
We all want the Bill.
