Elderly people from Murang’a county who are beneficiaries of the Inua Jamii programme want the government to revert back to channelling their monthly stipends through the bank instead of using the mobile phone money services.

They said having the money transferred via the digital platform is exposing them to a higher risk of being swindled by the con men.

The government has been piloting the disbursement of the funds electronically with Murang’a being one of the counties picked for the pilot.

 Irungu Kairu, one of the residents has fallen victim of the con men who withdrew Sh2,500 from his M-Pesa account, borrowed Sh6,000 from the KCB account and extra Sh300 under Fuliza.

Kairu said he got a call from a person who claimed to be working for Safaricom claiming they were updating the personal details for the beneficiaries of the cash transfer program.

“He asked me a few questions which I answered but I had no reason to suspect him after he told me he was updating the details in the system,” said Kairu. “For one day my I could not access my Mpesa account and the same person called back and gave further instructions to reactivate the account and that’s when I got some messages of the transactions that had been done.”